The more I think about, the more sense it would make to have the statusbar go across the entire bottom of the player and change the styling from white to more like a normal statusbar.
1. The current placement makes the hide/show info button jump around. Moving targets suck. Placing the bar at the bottom would eliminate this jumpiness
2. Visual design flaws. The current white styling is not meant to have any other widgets running into it. Sidebar handles look awful running into it and giving it a solid look would make the player feel imbalanced unless it ran across the whole thing.
3. Adding playlists. We've decided to follow GNOME in how they add and remove items from lists. Putting the statusbar across the bottom of the player would allow us to put add and remove buttons for playlist management.
4. The current visual hierarchy isn't accurate. The shuffle/repeat buttons only affect the current playing list, but the show/hide info button affects the interface of the player itself. Having the statusbar "beneath" the source list still maintains this hierarchy sort of, but having it outside the miller column (now on the left) makes this kind of weird. Shuffle certainly doesn't affect the order of artists in the column. And putting it inside the column just adds the jumpy button problem of 1
Amen to that.