Ranking songs in a playlist

I'm a bit OCD. I have my playlists by year, and within each year I rank the songs under the "grouping" category. While I am assigning numbers to tracks, I regularly get the lightning bolt icon in the upper right of the screen, signifying that the connection has been lost (to Match I assume). I lose work, and need to start over. Does anyone have experience with this? Many of my playlists have between 200-500 songs per year. Is there a better way to rank songs and have the numbers become more permanent? It is a sortable field, which I need. Thanks