Once upon a time, I did a learning project (for the Win32::GUI) module that I called MonkAmp. It was a win32 mp3 player that uses an XS interface to the amp11lib (GNU GPLd) that I wrote for this project.

If you want to play with it yourself, I found amp11 and amp11lib at http://www.ph.tum.de/~nbeisert/amp11.html and http://marvin.cc.fer.hr/~elf/amp11lib/. Amp11lib have a very nice well-defined interface.

If you want my code, please /msg me with your email address and I'll try to get the time to find the code, pack and send it to you.

Good luck,

/brother t0mas

Update:

You can use the built-in mci functions of Windows to do somthing like:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Win32::API;

use vars qw($mci $retstring $stop);

#- Import mciSendStringA
$mci = new Win32::API("winmm", "mciSendStringA", 'PPNN', 'N')
    or die "No we have no bananas....";

#- Init $retstring
$retstring=" "x256;

#- Open mp3 file 
$mci->Call("open whatever.mp3 alias mysound",$retstring,256,0);

#- Play it
$mci->Call("play mysound from 1",$retstring,256,0);

#- Until...
print "press Enter to stop playing....";
$stop=<STDIN>;

#- Stop
$mci->Call("stop mysound",$retstring,256,0);

#- Close
$mci->Call("close mysound",$retstring,256,0);
[download]

Works like a charm om my Windows ;-) Let's call it BUUAmp...