Could I request a brighter graphic or bigger change to show when rhythmbox is playing since the current icon is hard to see clearly.

What I would suggest is to colour the big circle in the icon the same as the blue play symbols, that white/blue contrast would make it much more obvious.

I did try to do it myself after reading something about the icons being in /usr/share/rhythmbox/icons, but couldn't see anything that I could edit for the play icon.

The reason I'd particularly like this is that with last.fm, there's quite often a pause before playback, and if you hit the wrong button you can completely hang some songs. I can fix that from the keyboard without opening the program, but to do that I need to know whether rhythmbox is currently playing so I know whether to hit play, stop or skip, and that's hard to see right now.

Other information:
Reported on Launchpad:
http://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/370815