Huge problems with iTunes/music library
To provide a little background awhile back I started using iTunes Match to sync music and save space on my iPhone. Later on I noticed my library was having more and more issues, such as, some songs (that I owned) would grey out and say "not available in your region" or were a different version of the song. Then about 50% of my Album art just disappeared and about 20% was changed to something else. One example is ALL my Led Zeppelin albums had the same art. Unacceptable!!
I recently got a new iPhone with plenty of storage and decided no more Match, it's gone! I turned off sync Library on all devices and now my iMac, Mac Pro, & iPad have different messed up versions of my music. My Phone is empty till I figure this out.
I spend days rebuilding the main library of my iMac recovering missing music and rebuilding/correcting all the Album Art. BTW the "Get Album Art" rarely works. I have over a 1000 albums and it was no easy task.
Once I had a mostly correct library I copied it for backup and then tried to load a copy /Macintosh HD/Users/***/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media too my MacBook Pro. Total fail! It was missing much of what I repaired and more.
I noticed the library location was not as selected (mostly)
/Macintosh HD/Users/***/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media
Sometimes a extra music/music folder was added.
This got my thinking maybe this is a Version issue. The particulars are below
iMac is a 2017 with Ventura 13.7 and the Music is version 1.3.6.14
MacBook Pro is 2019 with Sequoia 15.0.1 and the Music is version 1.5.0.174
The iPhone is a 16PM iOS 18.0.1 and music is ??
My questions are -
How do I get an identical library loaded to my MacBook and later on to my iPad & Phone?
When does iTunes end and Music begin or is it just a name thing? I mean they call it Music and the app is Music but it still had a iTunes folder within in the main library.
iMac 27″ 5K