There’s a lot of buzz about iTunes deleting people’s music. There’s the well known behavior, where Apple Music replaces music in a remote repository (for example, replacing a local copy of a tune on your iPhone when your music is hosted on your Mac). And then there’s the more insidious behavior, where a song is replaced or deleted on your official base repository.

In this post, Kirk McElhearn addresses the latter:

First, let me point out how important Time Machine is for backing up files. Unlike a standard backup, where a utility copies all your files to an external drive, adding changed files and removing deleted files, Time Machine keeps older files even after they’ve been deleted. So you can go back through the history of your files and potentially find a file that was deleted six months ago, and restore an older copy.

To do this, get soma-zone’s $10 Backup Loupe. This app can scan every Time Machine backup you have, and show you which files were added and which were deleted from each backup.

Backups will save your music, and the layered Time Machine backup will allow you to track down specific missing files.