Is there an easier way? Import directly into a playlist?

Question

I am in the middle of ripping all of my 5000+ cd's into iTunes as Apple Lossless files. I'm creating a music server with a Mac Mini, a few 1TB firewire hard drives & a Fubar II dac. I have about 500 done so far and it is becoming a handful. I insist on using playlists because I listen to lots of weird music with a lot of the artists using aliases so I want to be able to group them all together.
This is what I've been doing. I create a few hundred blank playlists. I import my cd making any changes first using command & I. I then scroll down to where all the untitled playlists are. I then have to scroll all the way to where the songs that were imported are listed alphabetically.I choose them using shift & the mouse dragging them to an untitled playlist. I do it this way because if I found by titling the playlist while it was importing and placing it where it sits alphabetically I was taking to much time trying to drag those tracks to the correct playlist. I was also occasionally dropping them in the wrong playlist altogether.
Is there really no way to automatically create a playlist using the artist and album info that you set up or what is automatically generated with cddb? Or can I really not create what I want my playlist to be titled and import the cd directly into it? I can't seem to solve this by using a smart playlist either. Any recommendations?

Answer 1

Here's what I've been doing for years. Its against the grain but so what.
I have 10,000 ripped files. From this I selected 2265 mp3 files(call these my Favorites) which always get "added to library" whenever I re-do my computer(s) which is very often(my hobby).
I use the Finder to organize my Music first not itunes. So I make folders and call them for example Metal, Jazz, etc ...within these folders become Artist names for example Beatles, Who , etc....I delete anything that is ahead of the name of the song(such as track number, its embedded anyway), Why? so it fits better in the smallish 'window' of music car player, etc...So what do I have ? A folder with 2265 mp3 files without track numbers and only my favorite mp3 files.
When I re-do the computer I just set up itunes always unchecking in "advanced preferences" for it to organize and make copies. I do that not itunes. I add to the library. Wait for itunes to do its thing. Set the view options. The only ones I do are, Artist, Album, bitrate, size, Grouping, time & equalizer.
Once the add is done I do that not itunes automatically, I focus on the Grouping. Examples are Metal, Folk, Smooth Jazz, etc I set these up years ago using itunes. The mp3 hold these id tags except equalizer. I select the Grouping column to arrange the sort, takes 1 second. Then do a select all by grouping and an command + i to set each Grouping equalizer all in one shot. When Equalizer function is completed for all the files then I make playlists. My Playlist is the same name as Grouping, for example Metal Grouping gets Metal playlist. That way I can find the entire Group of Metal and drag them to the playlist. All this sounds complicated, but how to explain? The entire process when I re-do my Mac takes 5 to 10 minutes. The hard work is setting up your MP3 files in the Finder but once done you only need to back up those files. iTunes is out of it. Lastly make sure you id3 tag your files when done in the itunes library using view and setting options. Make sure you drag these tagged files back to your original drive where you back them up. So they retain their tags you gve them.
Hope this helps