For me, the no-BS standard looking UI was the reason to choose Foobar, as compared to Win Media Player or Winamp and other weird looking ones. (Remember Sonique? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonique_%28media_player%29)

As for aero tiles... That's a Win8 thing? I guess it's a valid complaint. I think you can set global keyboard shortcuts for those actions, if that helps.

Aero is a vista+ thing. Hover over a playing vlc in the taskbar and you see skip/pause/play.

Foobar is classic to the cost of UX. We've figured out for a long time now bigger buttons are important, there's no need for separate pause/play especially if stop is right there.

It doesn't need a slew of crappy gradients and fancy shit, Just drag the interface forward a decade that's all. Usable with a touch screen should be a minimum now.