How do I stop this annoying error message in Music?

To identify all broken tracks in your library you can try this approach:

Lost & Found playlists

Create a regular playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost matching only Music items and the rule Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist. (iTunes/Music should only add a track to a regular playlist when it can 'see' the file at the relevant location.)

Or see https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=mxlistmias.

This is a slight over simplification as I haven't addressed tracks that are in the cloud. Use View > Only Downloaded Music first if that might apply.

tt2

All broken links in your library should either be repaired, eliminated from the library, or at the very least eliminated from your sync selections.

Assuming repair might be an option...

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. I think the app needs to be "aware" that multiple tracks are missing before you attempt to fix one, in order to trigger the offer to automatically fix others.

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.

tt2

This is a user to user support forum. I don't write Apple's software.

In Music > Settings > General try adding a tick against Show: Songs list tickboxes (or some variation on that theme).

Now try View > Show Filter Field, then type Boplicty in the new search box that opened up near the top right. This should reveal that particular track in your library. If you untick it, and have your preferences set to only sync ticked songs, then you should no longer get a pop-up when syncing. Now you have hopefully found that track you can decide whether you want to repair, remove, or ignore it.

tt2

This is unrelated to iCloud.com or iCloud Drive. Any unhidden past purchases that are not currently downloaded to your computer show up as cloud links that can be used to stream or download the track in question. A subscription to either iTunes Match or Apple Music extends the possibilities for cloud content in the library. Cloud items may behave unpredictably when trying to create the set of lost and found playlists, which is why I added the small addendum to my initial post on that topic.

The <user>/Music folder is the macOS location for music related software to place their data. In the past that would be iTunes, for example, along perhaps with GarageBand or Logic. The new Music app creates its library inside that folder making the typical, if somewhat odd, <user>/Music/Music nesting. The default media folder is called Media or perhaps Media.localized and goes in there. And for legacy reasons there might be a /Music subfolder inside Media before you get to artist folders. All of the above is covered in more detail in the Managing your Mac media libraries - Apple Community user tip.

tt2

TuckerdogAVL wrote:

I'm giving up for now.

Fair enough. If/when you want to tackle those multiple covers that are showing for what should be a single album you can come back to this post.

If iTunes or Music show multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Song Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

• For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
• For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen the app between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.

* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.

Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.

One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let it autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.

tt2

You have a legacy iTunes library which has been migrated into Music. Check the Music > Settings > Files tab to see what folder Music thinks your media folder is. Likely to be that iTunes Music folder in the third column of the second image above (if the thread is sorted by oldest). If Music is set to manage the media folder then metadata changes that help to regroup albums properly will also merge things at the folder level.

tt2

Some additional advice here: Managing your Mac media libraries - Apple Community.

tt2