I'm aware but thank you. I've tried it before and didn't like it. Maybe I'll give it another shot, though I don't see much benefit in tying my music player to Emacs.
I'm an Emacs graybeard, so complex keybindings don't scare me. My problem with ncmpcpp is twofold:
It relies on MPD which is always a PITA to properly configure. Pulseaudio always managed to make it not work on a fresh system. Hopefully with Pipewire it'll be better.
The config format make no sense whatsoever. Especially the one with keybindings. It's so cryptic I just stopped trying to understand it. Again, I'm an Emacs graybeard, to stress it as a point of reference.
I can see it working if one wants to customize the compilation flags of a few packages they have strong opinions on, but otherwise don't care about the rest of the system. Sort of like the binary cache in NixOS, where by default you use the binary cache, but you can customize parts of your system triggering a source-based installation for that parts.
If someone claims to do it for "all the optimizations", you can immediately assume they are full of shit. If anything, the true gain is the control over the features to compile or not compile into your packages.
Even back in the day when I still used Windows (and GUI almost exclusively) I browsed my filesystems like I'd use a terminal with tab-completion. I'd press the first few letters of the file/directory I was looking for and press enter, rinse and repeat. I knew my file organization by heart anyway. It's only natural for me to drop the GUIs for such use cases.
Obtaining it legally is one thing. Using it according to the license is at least just as important. Specifically if they trained it on content under GNU GPL or Creative Commons SA licenses, I'd like the result published under these licenses too.
It's not free speech unless you mute people telling you you're wrong when you speak.