Xmms-curses is a straightforward command line tool to manage XMMS playback.
Installing xmms-curses isn't the easiest, as there's no reasonable autoconf setup. However, running make may or may not do the trick for you. To install, just run make install and copy the binary to /usr/local/bin and the manpage to /usr/local/man/man1. Alternatively, you can copy the files manually to different places or if you're using Debian, run dpkg-buildpackage -b -rfakeroot and install the package using dpkg -i
When it comes to options, to negate a short option, use '+' instead of '-'. Long options are negated with 'no-', like --no-read-all. Lastly, there are several useful options: --numbers to show numbers in a playlist, --title to read the title from ID3/ogg-tags, --length to show the length of a track, --read-all to read all titles and lengths at startup, --version to display version information, and --help to print a help message.
To speed things up, try xmms-curses +tl. As for keys, the arrow right/left skips forwards/backwards by 5 seconds, arrow up/down moves up/down in the playlist or search results, page up/down scrolls up/down one page in the playlist or search results, enter selects and plays a file, x plays, c pauses, v stops, z and b jump to the previous and next song, 0 or + increase volume, 9 or - decrease volume, j searches for a file to jump to, L reloads the playlist, q exits from the application, and esc exits from the application or goes to the main view if in jump dialog.
The latest release includes code cleanups to get rid of warnings from GCC 4.0. Overall, if you're looking for a quick way to control XMMS from the command line, xmms-curses is the perfect solution.
Version 0.2.2: N/A