Boardburner2:
Does your media player have a control input port of some kind or just buttons ?
If it dosn't then you can do all that with your laptop or computer. You use the Arduino to sense the button presses and then send a message to the computer. Then a program running on that interprets the messages and plays / stops or what ever the media. The language called Processing is good for that.
Alternatively the computer board called a Raspberry Pi can do all that in one $35 board. Without needing a laptop.