Much of this work was heavily inspired by and some code taken from C.A.V.A and ncmpcpp.
Currently only MPD's fifo file is support.
In order to get the rainbow effect, you need a terminal with 256-color support. rxvt-unicode should work. I have done all my testing on Arch Linux with rxvt and on Mac OS with iterm2. Other terminals on other systems should work as long as they support 256 color, however I have not tested them.
So I've purchased a Raspberry Pi DAC and am experimenting with ncmpcpp and mpd. Seems to be exactly what I want/need. Thanks for the tips everyone.
There's plenty of breaking changes on that page, but the above is the one I encountered recently.
I really missed Media library view in mingus (http://rybczak.net/ncmpcpp/screens/screen08.png) a many others ncmpcpp features. And running ncmpcpp in regular terminal kind of ruins what I am trying to do - porting from outside terminal to emacs.