I see you have already asked the question at dpreview and it is worth doing a search there for the many relevant threads.

When I was looking a few years ago, I narrowed it down to 3 - IdImager, iMatch and Picasa. I'd already had a copy of Photoshop Elements, but, while it was pretty good as a photo editor, I found it very limited as a DAM prog and never used it as such.

Lightroom is a new arrival since I was looking, but you couldn't accuse it of being inexpensive; and Adobe's policies tend to make the expense fairly continuous.

Microsoft took over iView, which I thought was too expensive anyway.

There are others, such as ThumbsPlus, which some people like but I've never looked in detail atthem for one reason or another and would not like to comment.

IdI does everything you asked for including a slideshow with music, but it does cost $69.
Picasa has the advantage of being free, but you have already dismissed it.
iMatch is a very competent and fast database, but I've never heard anyone describe it as simple.

I admit to being hypersensitive to the possibility of email loss. That means multiple email clients (and databases), each containing everything, and multiple backups in multiple locations. But I don't do paper.