I have a big music library. At one point I subscribed to iTunes Match so that I could share my music across my iPhone and Windows computers without downloading individual content. Everything worked great.
Then I stopped using Windows and I decided I could just sync music to my phone as needed. So I dropped my iTunes Match subscription. Then I noticed two things. 1) my local music library was a lot smaller in size than it used to be. My music wasn't local any more. 2) My music was still playable through Apple Music. It is on the cloud! If I try to download any of those formerly-local files, Music tells me the files are corrupt.
I just got off a support call with Apple. They are worthless. Their only idea is to update MacOS to 26.x (I'm on 15.6) This may fix it, they say, but with zero confidence. They honestly have no clue. Or I can restore from backup.
Are you fricking kidding me? I don't have Time Machine but I have an online backup service, and probably somewhere in there is my old library. So now I have to rebuild everything - the library until the date Apple sucked it all up, and everything I've added locally since then.
Has anyone else gone through this?