Hmmmmmm, actually there might be some bizarrely inconsitent behavior depending on method -- this is OSX after all.
When I select all 37041 items and choose New Playlist from Selection from the context menu they all get copied to the playlist.
When I create an empty Playlist first and then select and drag, the missing-payload entries aren't added to the playlist. This drag/drop was tricky as I had to hold the pointer for several minutes until the pinwheel caught up and I could drag.
My context: I had my library manged from my previous MBP, with the media actually living across an AFP mount. When I changed jobs I had to give that laptop back, so I saved a dmg, which I recently finagled into a Fusion VM. I had a smaller set of tracks ripped onto my MP in my home directory that I needed to merge before I could do a wholesale move of the library, so I did Add to Library on the VM iTunes instance. Many of those tracks were LAME rips to replace existing 128kbps AAC rips. As I went through I deleted any lower-quality AAC rips and deleted the new tracks from the MP iTunes instance, and halfway through I purged trash on the MP, then proceeded to merge the rest of the tracks, about 1900 total. Then before purging again I realized that the Copy files to media folder option wasn't checked on the VM instance, which meant that I had pulled the files out from under the metadata. I was able to get ~900 back by doing a library consolidate, as iTunes knew where the files were in .Trash, but the balance I had purged were no longer on disk. So thanks to the above I have a list of that first, purged set which I'll selectively repair from a Crashplan backup.. Nothing new had been added to the MP iTunes instance in months, so I can get a clean restore there, it'll just take half a day then I can dive in.
