Apple Music "Kind" Switched to "PDF" On Most Tracks 😤

See Move your iTunes/Music library to a new computer or drive - Apple Community and Managing your Mac media libraries - Apple Community for some background advice. It should be possible to copy the active library to <New External>/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary, option-start-Music to open this new copy, reset the media folder to <New External>/Music/Media, and then consolidate the library. My hunch is that should still all work correctly, but I've not personally run across this issue. I'd be interested to know if the corruption is within the library itself, or the app. If you'd care to send me a zipped up copy of your .musiclibrary file I could see if it presents the same way on my machine, and if it does if there is any way I can use AppleScript to repair existing entries while preserving metadata.

tt2

Try holding down Option+Cmd as you launch Music. This should open in its safe mode which may do some useful housekeeping. Do you have Time Machine set up? An alternative approach would be to revert to a copy of the Music Library.musiclibrary package from just before this unwanted change occured.

tt2

You can restore a recent backup, then add the media folder to add in any recent additions. Doing it this way preserves playlists and all but recent ratings, plays, etc. Before you do anything however, is this essentially a cosmetic issue? Do the tracks still play correctly in Music, or does it attempt to open Acrobat Reader or similar?

Yours is the only thread I've seen on this issue so far. It might be that the app has somehow corrupted the associations between filetypes and their Kind descriptions. You cannot directly reinstall the app on its own without reinstalling the operating system. The last update was February 10, with a new release currently in beta so hopefully due out soon. With luck that might resolve the problem.

tt2

I meant to say my email address can be found in my profile here. Oops.

tt2