Catalina's Music.app never matches songs, instead it gives you a DRM-protected song

As long as you use Remove Download and not Delete from Library then you can get the DRM free version from the store. Just did it with half of this album.

Too much faff to make another image now, but after using Remove Download the tracks stayed in the library with cloud symbols, still registering as MPEG audio files. This album was added to my music library on Catalina two days ago from existing files I had on another computer. If new files you're ripping into the library are showing up as Apple Music AAC audio files then something is very definitely wrong. If existing content in your library is showing as Apple Music when you don't think it should then perhaps, just perhaps, you're mistaken. Do you have a backup drive with the original rips independent of your Apple Music library?

tt2

If you want to reclaim the space used by a matched or uploaded track you should use the Remove Download option to preserve the reference to the track in the cloud. By deleting the tracks you're removing them from the library completely. They disappear from any device immediately and computer that only has access to the cloud copy. If you have a downloaded copy in another computer library that would be marked as removed and you would have been able to add it back to the iCloud Music Library from there. I'm actually impressed by the "The copy you are deleting is not stored on other computers..." warning. That should have been enough to make you stop and reconsider what you were about to do. There are three full parallel copies of my library and I've never seen it when testing the behaviour of cloud content.

tt2