You might want to check music.youtube.com, I still have my (GMusic) uploaded collection available there, I cannot upload new, but what was there still is. Just mentioning it in case you are still looking for your music.
That said, yes, downloading (pirating or not) and setting a home music server seems to be the best option.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s not necessarily your music though, it’s the closest that they found in their library sometimes. I have tons of tracks that I uploaded the explicit copy of to gmusic but my library downloads only had the censored/radio version.
Found that out the hard way after a drive crash a few years back. Have spent a bit of time reacquiring the stuff I cared about.
Dentzy@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Wow! You are right, I completely forgot about that. You can listen to your music still, but it is true that is not a good way for rebuilding your collection 😟
The_v@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s why I have it uploaded to a cloud service but I have the entire collection backed up on my phone, 3 computers and a few miscellaneous SD cards.