foobar2000, Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Add/select appropriate entry and check "Global hotkey".

I have Ctrl-Pause bound to Play/Pause, Ctrl-PgUp to Previous and Ctrl-PgDn to Next.

NB if you have a media keyboard with the play/pause buttons etc then this is no necessary.

TheSOB88, you are dead, my friend. Another casualty of a poor policy.

AHK (http://www.autohotkey.com/) -- Global keybindings for any app you want.

Out of curiosity: I use AHK to do basic testing automation for a windows application that I have literally zero ability to control programatically (to achieve actually good automated testing). Anyone have a better option for this kind of use case?

I've used AHK for the same things - it's about the best free/open source thing I've found, besides just adding a scripting language to your program.

AutoIt is a popular choice:

http://www.autoitscript.com/

AHK is based on AutoIt v2.

Wow I'd forgotten about AHK. Thanks for reminding me!

I wrote some software (http://www.mute.fm/) that controls playback for you automatically when you watch a video (it will pause/mute it and resume it afterward.) It also lets you set up global hotkeys.

try foobar