Music skipping halfway through - solved

Hi guys, just posting this in hopes that it'll help someone else, because this issue plagued me for months and I finally figured it out. I had the issue where, halfway through a song, iTunes would suddenly skip to the next song - the files themselves were intact, and I discovered that the library itself was corrupt.

Make sure you check the files that are skipping first to make sure they're not the problem! You can do this by opening them in QuickTime Player.

NOTE that I am using MacOS Catalina and I have a paid Apple Music subscription, so I'm not sure how the iCloud step would work for someone without a subscription - my music was already backed up to the iCloud Music Library. Just make sure you back everything up to an additional location in case something goes wrong.

The solution to the skipping issue is:

1. Store your iTunes Music Library.xml file - it should be inside Macintosh HD/SSD>Users>(your username)>Music - somewhere where the app can't see it. Ideally, zip it up, upload it to Google Drive or something, and delete the original. I'm not sure if the XML file actually matters or not but it's good insurance.
2. Back up your library somewhere safe, and make sure you note down the location. Mine was in Music>iTunes>iTunes Media.
3. Open Music, go into Preferences>Files and check "Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library".
4. Quit Music.
5. Hold the Option key down and open Music while continuing to hold the key. Music should prompt you to either choose a library or create a new one. Choose to create a new one, and name it something memorable (e.g. FixedLibrary). It should create a new folder by that name in your Music folder.
6. Hit ⌘O or File>Import and click on the music library you backed up - that was the previously mentioned iTunes Media folder for me.
7. Unzip your iTunes Music Library.xml file back into the Music folder and import that as well.
8. Go to Preferences>Files and where it says "Music Media folder location" click "Change…"
9. Find the FixedLibrary folder inside your Music folder. Inside FixedLibrary should be another folder that says "Media". Select that folder and click Open.
10. As an additional step, I checked the "Sync Library" box in Preferences>General. This updated my iCloud library and added all the original songs back.

I don't know if this process can be simplified any further, but it's vastly simplified from all the searching and "debugging" I did. Hope this helps! 😁