Roger Bell_West wrote:

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.sys.raspberry-pi.]
On 2017-12-17, D.M. Procida wrote:
I mostly found myself controlling it via a web browser, which was not
nearly as irritating as I expected. Still, I think I will find some way
of setting up proper hardware controls on it, because jabbing at a phone
or having to go to my MacBook is no way to control what's playing.

Have you looked at a client/server approach? The Pi I use to provide
music at barbecues runs a streaming mp3 client pulling music off an
mpd server; any mpd client software can connect to and control that,
and I've written a web front-end too.

It *is* a client/server. The server just happens to be running on the
same machine as the client.

Daniele