I have recently moved my music over to a new better machine. When I click on the folder for an artist it shows up empty. No songs. If however I do properties of the entire My Music folder it shows up as the appropriate amount of GB. I can play the songs from iTunes even though the folder is empty.
Am I missing something obvious? Or do I need to pull over the old externals music again to the folders?

In iTunes click on the little black & white box top left and then select preferences.
Click on Advanced and check that the iTunes Media folder location is correct and change if necessary.
If alls ok but still empty select black & white box again and click on Add File to Library and then locate folder where they are located and then select albums or tracks.

I am assuming you are using a Windows based computer, it sounds as if you have "hidden files" selected in your files and folder options. Sorry can't remember exactly how to get to the menu to change this as have not used Windows systems for some time.

Tried that it still doesn't show the songs. Yet if I delete the song in iTunes it actually shows up in the recycle bin. If I then restore the song, it once again disappears into thin air.

When you can see the file in iTunes, try right clicking the files and select Get Info, then click the info tab & check to see if it's actually ticked as part of a compilation, if it is it will be stored elsewhere (in the compilations folder) so untick it and press ok.

If this isn't the answer, you could right-click and select "show in windows explorer" and that will open the location folder of the music files, which may help.

The show in Windows Explorer found them. Thank you for that. Just seemed very weird they weren't where it said originally.

You're welcome.


iTunes gets some funny ideas sometimes

I had a similar problem moving iTunes from a PC to a Mac. You may find that when you look at iTunes you now have a double entry for everything with alternate entries unplayable and with an exclamation mark in a triangle against them, delete these.