Music disappeared from Music app on desktop

I checked Music settings, and it does indeed show path leads to iTunes Music folder. I can easily drop that folder in Music & see what happens, but I also decided to try looking at the Doug’s Scripts, and see what it showed.

First, I tried the one you suggested, Music Folder Files Not Added, but it only works with iTunes, so I downloaded Media Folder Files Not Added v2.5. It found 783 “missing” items, which suggests a widespread issue.

Investigating the list, I found three missing songs listed for a group, but when I did a search, I actually have all three of those songs in my music library, but they are not checked because I have the same song already in there from a different album, so I wasn’t playing the duplicate. Also, when I use the contextual menu, the one that is checked will let me show it in the Finder, but the one that is unchecked will not. It does offer me the option to download it, except it’s already on my computer, and I can play it in Music.

Checked

Unchecked, and listed as “missing”

For another group, I found a whole album that was missing, which is what I was expecting to find for all 783 songs.

And for a different group, it shows a bunch of missing songs, but when I go to the Music library, all the songs are there, except the ones listed in the script show the exclamation mark, meaning that Music can’t find them. Obviously, in that case, I can just point music towards the folder they’re in, which I did.

Lastly, over 400 of the items found by the script seem to be podcasts, which I only have a few of in my library.

Anyway I guess I will just drop the music folder back into Music and see if it does indeed find all the “lost” songs & readd them to the library.

So you are saying to just drop the iTunes Music folder, which has all my music from the past 22 years (244 GB) onto the Music app, and Music should only import missing songs? Or a different folder(s)? Just want to be clear before I go nuclear on this.

And which “library” are you suggesting I backup? I do backup my boot drive every night, so for 24 hours I have a copy, until the next days back up overwrites anything that has changed. And of course I have Time Machine going constantly so certain files should be backed up there.

Thanks.