mpd doesn’t corner the market on music daemons. And mpc isn’t the only client that can do the job either.
Here’s moosic, a slightly simpler frontend for a similar approach to music playback.
Almost identical, except perhaps with the difference in ease of setup: moosic has almost none.
No, really. I didn’t even start the daemon. moosic did it for me. I gave it the add command, then play, and off it went, happy as a clam.
moosic probably has fewer commands than mpc, but of course I say that knowing very little about how to use mpc efficiently.
On the whole, I’d have to call moosic a simplification of mpc, but with the same overall result.
Next time I need something like mpd, but without the (harumph) hassle of setting it up, I’ll come looking for moosic.
P.S.: Python alert again: If you need exceedingly light software, this one might be sluggish for you.