The SDL::Mixer was a poor example. I've already written the app for the most part(oriented towards touchscreen interface, but I was using XMMS for playback. Too much lag with large playlists on my laptop, so I decided to look at SDL::Mixer. I didn't know if it blocked while playing or was asynchronous. Hence not delaying in the example.

My thought is to just shell out, edit and reload the playlist at this point. I'm pretty happy with the speed and level of control I have managing the interface myself with SDL.