I also use a PC to rip, download and tag music.
Then I copy music on NAS, very fast, gigabit network.
Then I give command to BDP-1 to update database, first update is very slow (hours for 4TB of files), after that is faster
By default BDP is the server for MPD and gives commands to stream and play music files. For this I use either an app from my phone to select the music I want to play or, if you want to control it from laptop/PC I would recommend Cantata MPD. I believe this is the best way to use BDP
BDP provides also other ways to stream music, using DLNA or Squeezebox type of server that can be installed on your PC or on your NAS, not very experienced with this though...
P.S. There is a thread in the sticky topics on BDP Recommended interfaces