Exactly this. There were even curated collections on Oink/what.cd of these lists which is where I obtained a large portion of my collection. Those days were the end of the era for me. I still had access to an FTP-ish site that was an offshoot of Something Awful Forums but that decayed probably 10-12 years ago.

I still have a turntable/cd-changer in my living room which is used monthly at least, but it is mostly a social thing (kids, friends etc). For mobile digital, I had been using Subsonic and subsequent forks since 2010 but self-hosting is too much work with real work and life taking a front seat, still have iSub on my phone with around 4k songs cached which is all I listen to in the car, no paid streaming services at all for over 2 years now. There is a 5k song limit for my car but the plan is to dump my whole collection into multiple USB sticks and rotate as I see fit.

I'm constantly reminded of those past days when certain songs roll through of my youth (90's, 2000's) and the who, when and where of it all. I also get to pass it on to my kids as they discover this musical past in real-time next to me which makes it even sweeter.