Nightingale [1] is a community-supported fork of Songbird (development of songbird is discontinued).
It has a bar-like "mini player" mode. Size and functionality (and availability) of that mode depend on the skin selected, but in general there are buttons for prev,pause,next track, volume control, current trackname, length and current position. It does not have a separate playlist though, but double clicking it brings you back to the itunes-like "main player" mode.
The mini player is still somewhat bulky, for my taste. I remember Songbird had some skins, that made it even slimmer. I fixed this for me with a small AutoIT script, that fades the player to 10% transparancy when the mouse is not hovering on top of it.
The mini player is still somewhat bulky, for my taste. I remember Songbird had some skins, that made it even slimmer. I fixed this for me with a small AutoIT script, that fades the player to 10% transparancy when the mouse is not hovering on top of it.
[1] http://getnightingale.com/