Syncing music onto iPod Classic on a PC now iTunes won’t work

Tl;dr: How can I transfer music I own (stored on my PC) onto my iPod now that iTunes won’t work and the Apple Music app won’t recognise iPods?

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I am a long-time PC + iPod owner. I also like to own my own music. I do not subscribe to Apple Music. I have a large music collection, and in terms of new music I have a combo of digital music that was a complimentary download when I purchased the vinyl, digital tracks purchased from the artist, and digital tracks purchased from iTunes. These are all MP3s physically stored on my hard drive.

I historically used iTunes to transfer music to my iPod and iPhone, update playlists etc.

Recently my PC forced me to download the Apple Music App, and iTunes now no longer shows any of my music content, only podcasts. I managed to get the AM app to sync with my iPhone, but it will not recognise my iPod classic, I’m assuming because they’ve discontinued support for “old” products (sigh).

All the info I can find on this issue suggests using “finder” to transfer new music to an iPod instead - however, being a PC user I don’t have “finder”. Obvs I can “find” the iPod on my computer when it’s plugged into the USB port, but the files are stored in a weird way (unlike the more user friendly interface on “finder”), so it’s not possible to move new music onto the iPod as it would be on a Mac (happy to stand corrected though!)

Is there *any* way to transfer new music into my iPod? Losing my mind here. It seems ridiculous that this would have become impossible in this day and age, and I’m pretty devo. I love having all my music and carefully curated playlists on one digital device. Please help me community!