I was having the same issue and agree it is ridiculous that you have to pay Apple to access your music that you imported from your own CDs. Yet another reason why I am listening to almost all my music through Spotify these days.
One workaround that might help - create a new playlist that includes all the music you've added to iTunes.
1. Create a new Smart Playlist
2. Set the playlist to include all music add between any date before you started using iTunes (I used 1/1/1994 just to be sure) and some date in the future. I used 12/31/2017 to give myself a few years of not having to go manually change the playlist settings.
You can then pull that playlist up from the playlists menu and access all your music.
This should work until Apple finds a new way to screw their users who just want their music on their computers and devices directly, and don't want to pay $30 a year to access their own files.
Hope this helps.