I can't speak for the original iTunes (I used it but not heavily and too long ago to remember), but I've been a consistent user of iTunes between Snow Leopard a

I can't speak for the original iTunes (I used it but not heavily and too long ago to remember), but I've been a consistent user of iTunes between Snow Leopard and Monterey and my experience is that it's gotten worse with every release. With Music being the worst iteration yet, and significantly worse than the last version of iTunes I used (on High Sierra). I actually have a whole laundry list of things I consider regressions in the Music app, but I'll just regale you with the most frustrating one for my use case: If you use Home Sharing with wired headphones, it works. If you use wireless headphones with a local music library, it works. If you use wireless headphones and Home Sharing, it does not work. The program refuses to play anything. This was a nice surprise when I first tried to use Music after getting this laptop. (I'm actually really curious if anybody else experiences this behavior -- anybody reading please chime in if so!)