I’m usually too distracted by other work to remember to kick-off some music in the background.  Usually because it’d mean launching iTunes, waiting for it to load, finding a playlist to start, and kicking it off.  So I’ve created a single global hotkey to instantly load iTunes and start playing music.  Here’s how:

1. Get the Tools
   Have a master AutoHotKey hotkey file and set PowerShell to autoload my little iTunes.ps1 library on PowerShell startup.  With these two it makes it real easy to assign hotkeys to various iTunes commands.
2. Create a “PlayHotkey” Playlist in iTunes
   Just a playlist to be kicked off when the hotkey is pressed.  I’ve got mine set to shuffle unplayed tracks.
3. Add AutoHotkey Line
   What enables this line to be so simple is that there is a itPlaylist function in the above iTunes.ps1 file that gets auto loaded as part of step 1.
   

   ; Play Music NOW with Win+Alt+P
   #!p:: Run powershell -command (itPlaylist('PlayHotkey')).PlayFirstTrack(),,Hide

My full script: MediaKeys.ahk
Related posts: Hotkey to Play/Pause/Next iTunes Tracks, Hotkey to Rate an iTunes Track 

p.s. Another option is to just launch Pandora with a hotkey.
#!p:: Run http://pandora.com