May i suggest a old standby? Why not a MPD (Music Player Daemon) with some crontab entries using MPC (command-line controller for MPD) to control it! (The best part about this is you can play any other music in MPD's database (there is a config setting to set the location of the "Music") by using one of the million smartphone apps that control MPD)
Also MPD runs as a system service so it will work no matter what!