First, having an alias to the &quot;Automatically add to iTunes&quot; folder on my desktop has helped quite a bit with adding non-Apple ecosystem music (primarily from Bandcamp) to iTunes. It doesn&#x27;t seem to make too many wrong choices, but then again, likely the people who package the mp3s do their best to work with the ecosystem.<p>Second, I&#x27;ve stayed the eff away from iTunes Music. It likely doesn&#x27;t have what I want anyways, but compared to their hardware, it just seems more like some executive&#x27;s idea of how to improve Apple&#x27;s income from iTunes rather than an actual music lover&#x27;s platform. And iTunes is kind of a hot mess trying to do too many things while execs decide to keep tinkering with it rather than doing the multi-product rethinking they would need to make it work again.<p>Third, a few times a year I make sure to backup everything that isn&#x27;t on Apple, and most of everything that is. And not via &quot;Time Machine&quot; either, which you should be doing, but actually copying the iTunes music folder or any other downloads onto external media.