At the bottom of the playlist there should be a summary about where the media is currently playing at including how much time of the playlist is spent/total -remaining, file number out of file count.
Options > Preferences > Playlist > Adding Files > Get info automatically about files added (slow)
This information should be retrieved in the background. No need to stop things from working while getting this information.
While loading this information current summary could be displayed something like
(>=spent)/(>=total) -(>=remaining) or (spent+?)/(total+?) -(remaining+?), and
file n / filecount, or file n of filecount, ...