This is easy (meaning "possible") to do from userland, if anyone wants to do it..

Way ahead of ya. I don't have anything that's "release quality" yet but I do have primitive Now & Next custom info modes working. Having N&N pop up just during track selection is a trivial next step.

Incidentally, there are some Hiajack API improvements that I've suggested in the past that may make a "player frontend" app like emphatic a lot easier to develop (and more useful, like not having to quit out of it to run another user app.) But I think even with the current API, I can make this one happen, as long as people are willing to accept a user app in between them and the player (and having to manually select said app from the Hijack menu each time their empeg boots.)

No timetable for completion, though, as I need to clean up a lot of spaghetti code first.