Apple Music won't find "missing" files

The script ought to work, although renaming the volume and moving the folder as suggested would seem to be a more efficient route. Music might make a better job of using its own repair mechanism if you set the media folder as /Eleven/Media/iTunes. The additional /Music folder will be implied by a preference file before Music attempts to locate the artist and then the album folder in which to find the track it is looking for.

Once you have the library in a working state it would be possible to use steps from Make a split library portable to convert it into a portable form, after which you could then rename the drive again. The typical layout for a Music library is a Music folder that contains the Music Library.musiclibrary database and a Media folder, which has a Music subfolder, that in turn contains the artist folders.

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The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes or Music expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, the drive it lives on has had a name change, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes or Music have changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates at some point.

Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Cmd-I to get Song Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location the library thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drives. Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac - Apple Community.

In some cases the library may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.

If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

1. The location of the media folder under iTunes|Music > Preferences > Advanced
2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Song Info > File > Location that begins file://
3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2

See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.

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PS a brief review of your details suggest the easiest repair might be to rename your external drive from Eleven to MEDIA and then move the folder iTunes from /MEDIA/Media into /MEDIA.

Thanks for posting in the Apple Support Communities tonoluv33,

We understand you're having issues with songs in the Music app not being found, or pointing to the wrong location.

The following page offers guidance you can use to update the location of your Music Library, to reflect where music is actually being stored, as well as related settings that keep your music library organized as you add new music: Change Files preferences in Music on Mac

We hope this helps!

You're welcome. 🙂

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