Converting broken links to Apple Music links

Hi,

Once upon a time I had all of my music files on an external hard drive. Said hard drive shuffled off this mortal coil unexpectedly (😢). I know, I know, should have backed it up, but I had thought "hey, it's fine, I have Apple Music."

Now, a vast portion of my iTunes library is broken links (exclamation point icons). If I click on them it gives me the option to "Locate" the missing file, or "Cancel". When I cancel, iTunes suddenly removes the exclamation point and begins streaming that particular track from Apple Music.

I have several thousand files with exclamation points, and can't go through them one at a time to do this; it also appears that simply deleting one of these broken links from my iTunes also removes it from my general Apple Music library, which is also not what I want - I'd like to keep things like play counts, not to mention albums I listened to long ago and may not remember to re-add to my library if they get deleted.

Is there a way to tell iTunes "hey, all these files are gone forever, keep the artists/albums in my library but just stream them from Apple Music instead?"

Thanks in advance.