Backed up iTunes on external drive and lost my playlists

Hey Everyone,
So here is my issue. I use my macbook for DJing purposes and decided to backup my iTunes library to an external hard drive incase of a crash so I dont loose my precious music. So I went into my preferences, Advanced, and changed the iTunes folder location to my external, and consolidated the library which backed up my files to the drive but did not delete them from the internal drive, However whenever I would click a song to play it said it could not find the file. So I went back into preferences and changed the folder location back to iTunes music but that still didnt work. To make a long story short, I ended up Re importing the playlist (From internal Drive) back into itunes which worked fine. Here is my main issue.... All of my playlist folders are there but they are all empty. I have about 100 of them and are very very organized. I am wondering since I backed up the library to the external drive, Are the playlist folders on my external hard drive and how can I retrieve them if they are? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in Advance!

decided to backup my iTunes library to an external hard drive incase of a crash so I dont loose my precious music. So I went into my preferences, Advanced, and changed the iTunes folder location to my external, and consolidated the library which backed up my files to the drive
This is not a backup. This copies everything in iTunes to the new location and iTunes will use that location from now on.
The music located in /Music/iTunesiTunes music/ folder is no longer needed or used by iTunes.
However whenever I would click a song to play it said it could not find the file
iTunes was looking for it on the external (which you probably unplugged/umnounted).
I am wondering since I backed up the library to the external drive
You did not back up the library to the external.
You consolidated everything in iTunes to the external and iTunes will use that.
As Jim noted, if you want to to backup, copy the entire iTunes folder.
Jim'
If you somehow lost it, look for it in the "Previous iTunes Libraries" folder in your music folder.
The itl file gets copied into the *Previous iTunes Libraries* folder only when you update iTunes.

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