Music app on my Mac can no longer find my music files

The .Trashes part of that path doesn't look encouraging. That suggests the content was deleted at some point in the past with the library remaining connected to it, and is now no longer in the trash if it won't play.

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, (see the iTunes Media Organization section of Managing your Mac media libraries - Apple Community for details) 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.

tt2

A script is a program written in plain text that you can potentially read and modify rather than a pre-compiled application. The script checks each track that was selected when you started running the script and tests to see if Music knows where that track is located, if Music says no the script works through a pattern of potential locations and if found updates the location property in the library. No playlists or other metadata are modified. The user tip gives instructions on how to copy and paste the program into the Script Editor, or a link to a file you can download. The script itself will guide you through its operation.

tt2

Hi,

As above, if you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

1. The location of the media folder under Music > Settings > Files. - At at guess it should be OWC Part 2/cd music etc/iTunes/iTunes Media, but you might have selected something else.
2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Song Info > File > Location that begins file:// - I've got file:///Volumes/OWC Part 2/.Trashes/501/02 Rise Up (Easy Rider) 1.aif from above, but I'd normally expect to see artist and album folders in that path somewhere. Music probably cannot make the repairs itself if you locate one broken track and ask it to fix others when prompted.
3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2 - I can read that from the screenshots. It looks like the file is in the standard layout, which increases the chance that my FixLinks script can fix things for you.

tt2

You don't need to edit the downloaded version. You can open the script from the current location and press the run button in the script editor to run it. If you want to access the script from Music's menu bar then you would use Finder to move/copy the script ~/Library/Music/Scripts. ~ is your user's home folder, Library is a hidden folder that can be revealed with Shift+Cmd+. and you have to manually create the Music and Scripts folders if they don't already exist.

tt2

While Finder has focus hold down shift and command at the same time, then while holding those down tap the . (period) key. This shows/hides hidden files, which should allow you to navigate to ~/Library and create the relevant subfolders (Music and Music/Scripts) inside it. You can then copy the script from one place to the other.

tt2

Did you try and fix everything in one go, or did you select a small batch of tracks to see how that behaved. I believe the script may not work so well when working with larger numbers of items. On the face of it a particular action took too long to complete and Music decided to stop running the script.

tt2

Is it working for say 100? What about 1,000? It is possible there might be specific tracks that the script cannot fix, or cause it to bail. I've not been able to think about all the ways in which it might not work.

tt2