I'm an extremely inexperienced web designer (and a musician), trying to create a fairly sophisticated website with my music on it.
I have seen sites where the play/forward/back controls match the website's design, and control streaming audio. THAT is what I want to do, but have no idea where to start. Can anyone help me?

I understand the basic principals of how to embed audio with the <object> command, but don't understand what part of that command tells my website to post that ugly silver playback control. Can I hide that control but still use its functions? Can I instruct my website to perform those functions without the object command? Am happy to try with CSS or HTML or anything else.

Thanks for any advice!

The player controls in their native form are a function of the browser and plug-in. The tag can either display them or not but it can't change them, except for their size.

You can create a custom Flashplayer (with flash) or a wired QuickTime movie (with flash or LiveStage) but these are not trivial things to do.

Probably WMV and REALplayer as well, but I'm not familiar with programming those.

Thanks - that's not what I wanted to hear, but it's what I was afraid of. May have to bite the bullet and pay someone to help me. Thank you for your help!