I don't like this for one simple reason, and it's that a bunch of button commands would be flying by and appearing on the player's UI.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean the rest of us should be deprived of a feature. If you don't like it, don't use it... it's optional.

I agree it's not the most elegant solution, but we don't have an API into the player so this would be one possible workaround.

There's a plugin for WinAMP that creates a web page with details on what's playing right now. With a simple shell script, you'd be able to do the same thing for the empeg. Then write a frame wrapper around a couple of those and you have a web page that shows what each mp3 player in your house is playing.

The possibilities are endless when you can script stuff per song!