What are the best practices for organizing Apple Music albums on Mac?

Seems somewhat drastic. You can create a new Music library without wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. Nowhere in your list of instructions have you included steps to preserve and restore any other user data.

tt2

From Legal - Apple Media Services - Apple (UK version, but will be similar elsewhere):

- Purchased Content will generally remain available for you to download, redownload, or otherwise access from Apple. Though it is unlikely, subsequent to your purchase, Content may be removed from the Services and become unavailable for further download or access from Apple (for instance, because Apple loses its right from the Content provider to make it available). To ensure your ability to continue enjoying Content, we encourage you to download all purchased Content to a device in your possession and to back it up.

What has likely happened here is that Apple no longer has the right to distribute this content. Do you have any backups or old devices it might be recovered from?

tt2

My music is there. I just can't download it. Click Download All, it downloads 1 track and stops. Click on an album cloud download, it selects one random track from the album, downloads it and stops. ARGH. Look at the bottom left after clicking on the full album download.

I spent ages with tech support trying to fix this one. I have loads of albums - like compilation albums - not on Apple Music, or predating streaming.

1) About a third of the tracks give Encoding Error when playing on Sonos speakers via my Apple Music account (no-one can explain it)

2) I can't actually redownload the albums from the Purchased screen because it's a dreadful screen without the ability to properly manage your purchased content the way you used to in iTunes back in the day. And if I hit "download all", it downloads 1 random track from the hundreds waiting to download - and then stops. It is broken.

ARGH!

When signed into your Apple ID in Music you should find that all of your unhidden past purchases are listed within your library. Either already downloaded, or available to stream or download on demand. You can create a smart playlist with the rule Location is not on this computer to reveal all of the tracks you might download. You can view this in the Songs layout and sort by Kind if needed to group Purchased AAC music together. You select content in batches (click one track, shift-click another to include the range) then right-click and click Download from the pop-up menu. Review your hidden purchases if required.

Pre-2010 iTunes purchases may include DRM which limits them to being played on Apple's hardware and software. You may be able to burn these to audio CD and rip back for a perhaps negligible loss of quality and the freedom to use in your other software & hardware.

tt2

In a frustrating situation, I deleted the purchases in the Purchased screen of the compilations because I spent weeks and several support sessions trying to get them to download. Your way is genius. Is there a way to un-hide purchases?

Thanks. Sadly, loads of albums are still not showing. They are all the Now Yearbook compilations (I just like collecting them - don't judge me!)

They were causing problems. They are in my Purchased screen but when I hit Download All, only 1 song downloads, leading hundreds not downloaded. Only the odd song that managed to download shows when I do your playlist idea. The rest remain locked away inaccessible.

See Hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books - Apple Support.

tt2

What do you see if you switch to the Songs tab? I'm thinking it will only list random tracks from each of those albums.

tt2

I see the songs able to be downloaded one by one but not all the albums. Just the latest ones (is it 250 songs?) but not all. I can go one by one but it takes about 10 seconds for each to get going.