Starting fresh with Apple Music after too many workarounds.

When Apple Music replaced iTunes, I didn't expect any problems since I tend to do things by-the-book and had been happy with whatever new thing Apple introduced, so maybe I didn't properly review what the transition entailed, thinking that I could always restore things from Time Machine if it came to that. Unfortunately the transition was a disaster for me, with years of ripped CDs and careful editing of metadata disappearing altogether. I became so frustrated that I thought I'd figure it out "some day" but always found myself too busy to really delve into it, and resigned myself to using Apple Music as it now existed on my machine, feeling certain that I could repair the damage when I had a chance.

Years later now, after using Apple Music, for the most part, as a radio, listening to whatever is deemed likely to be of interest "for me", I'm just wishing I could listen to my music again, so I've located media folders and various "iTunes libraries" within my backups, and thought I'd try to start fresh with apple and give Apple Music a chance to work for me in the way that I assume it was meant to. So I created a folder within Music that contained all my old iTunes library items, recreating from a backup the associated media files in the same folder hierarchy as before, but contained in this new folder to keep it distinct from the new Music file, in case things again went sideways. Then I just asked Apple Music to switch to this old library, and for the most part, it seems to have done this pretty well. There are oddities like duplicate playlists and empty playlists that concerns me, and yet I feel optimistic that all the actual MUSIC is actually accessible to me.

There are exceptions, though, and I hope it can be fixed. On occasion, a playlist will stop, interrupted by a message informing me that I need to authorize this computer to play the content. I enter my credentials, but it says I need to enter the information for the account that was used to purchase the music. I have vague recollections of needing to change my apple ID at one point, maybe in order to have it match my email address? I figured I could figure out what content might've been purchased under an old user ID, but when I try to sign in to the account that they tell me was used to purchase the music in question, I'm instructed that the user ID doesn't exist and that user IDs take the form of an email address, which I know, but the ID that they tell me was attached to the purchased content in question did not take that form.

And then there are some handfuls of items I've created in the new Apple Music app that have some relevance to me that I'd like to be able to merge into the rebuilt library, like playlists I made for significant events and such, and the purchased music that those playlists contain.

I worry that I've made it more complicated than it needs to be and wonder what might be the best way to "start fresh" with Apple Music, using the default locations of default library catalogs and then maybe "import" old metadata and playlists from the old backups? That I've been paying so much over these years for such a miserable experience is something I'd like to be able to put behind me, so if there's a suggestion for cleaning up the glitchy anomalies and simplifying things for however Apple Music prefers to structure itself, I'd be very grateful for any tips.