Media players that can be programmatically controlled? (Ruby)

I already know that iTunes has an interface that I can control, but the API is a bit opaque and I can't find it documented anywhere. Does anyone know of any 开发者_StackOverflow社区good open-source or at least well-working media players that can be programmatically controlled?

In particular, I would like to be able to search a media library for a song by title or artist, and play, pause, resume, stop the song.

Ruby would be nice, because I'm working in it, but C would work too. I could write a wrapper.

Edit: My solution has to work on Windows, as that is the environment I am developing in.

XMMS works on a server / client basis. This means that it is relatively easy to control the playback, and the song queue. I'm not sure how easy is to handle file metadata (song info), but maybe that part can be handled independently.

Check this guide to get an overview of functions you can use.

Back in the day, I used MPD.