The phone just updated the software. It is Android version 11, Samsung UI version 3.1.
I restarted to test it again. I waited 30 seconds and then opened Poweramp. When I click "artists" it says "doesn't look like anything there". The album image is missing. However if I click on "songs", it looks like the songs are there. They play with the images intact. But when I check my playlists, the songs load and play, but they are not identified by the artist and the images are missing. This has been the problem for the last 2 weeks.
....Now 15 minutes into the reboot, it is still scanning the library, with nearly half of the 24k songs accounted for from the 256 SD card, but zero playlists in the library settings (even though as mentioned he songs load and play, but they are not identified by the artist and the images are missing.)
...Now 20 minutes in, the library is rescanned and the playlists are available with artist listed and images intact.