I started this thread on the premise of paying for 3.0, not new (ie. different) player application.

The money would be "padding" aka sweetener. You're not going to hire anyone full-time for $50K. And anyone capable of writing a good replacement player isn't going to do it for that price unless it's also a labour of love for them.

Speaking specifically (because some people are happy with the way it is), I'd really like to have a final/stable release with cross-fading, full soup support (with the ability to opt-out certain criteria, like 1-track artists from the artists list), the concept of an "album" if not already inherent to the soup implementation and the ability for emplode to edit the ID3 data of tracks already on the player (modify player DB, sync and offer the option to update ID3). If I want to get Fancy, I'd LOVE to see some of what Tonyc has provided in Emphatic (custom info screens) built into the player. But that's already doable, so I wouldn't ask for that over the abobve and/or what's already on the table with 3.0 (including features that are being exposed from other projects).

Access by a third party to the source looks like the most interesting, even if not possible, idea. Hey, maybe someone that works for Rio right now would be interested in doing this on their "off" time. Though I imagine that would be a stretch and leave very little time for things like sleep or a life outside work.

If I was independently wealthy I'd bite the bullet, propose this myself, bank-roll it myself and give it to everyone else for free. Or hell, sink a few million into just coming up with a completely new design and then sell it to the board members for the price of a hamburger. It would be money-losing, but would leave some satisfaction for me.

Bruno