Windows Media Player - how to establish references?

[semiopen]

Greetings

I have been playing around a little with using VBScript to interact
with Windows Media Player's library.
For example, here is a script that works fine:

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Set mp = CreateObject("WMPlayer.OCX" )
Set mpColl = mp.MediaCollection
Set songList = mpColl.getByAttribute("MediaType", "Audio")
Set albumDict = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")

For i = 0 to songList.Count - 1
Set song = songList.Item(i)
albumKey = song.getItemInfo("WM/AlbumArtist") & ", " &
song.getItemInfo("Album")
If not albumDict.Exists(albumKey) Then
albumDict.Add albumKey, ""
End If
Next

albumArray = albumDict.Keys
For i = LBound(albumArray) to UBound(AlbumArray)
msg = msg & vbCrLf & albumArray(i)
Next

Msgbox "Albums:" & msg

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

I would like to get it to run in VBA , preferably using early bindings
and New rather than the CreateObject approach, but every attempt I've
used to add the proper references to the project (several references
mention Windows Media Player - wmp.dll looks like it *should* work)
always throws an error when I try to instantiate a media player
object. For example, both

Dim mp As WindowsMediaPlayer
Set mp = CreateObject("WMPlayer.OCX")

and

Dim mp As WindowsMediaPlayer
Set mp = New WindowsMediaPlayer

Throws a run-time error (-2147467259 (80004005): Automation Error,
Unspecified Error)

Any idea what is happening here? Solutions? I would be satisifed with
any way to modify the above script to run in VBA.

Thanks in advance

-semiopen

p.s. Ultimately, I would like to create a spreadsheet that tracks what
music I play as a function of time, and would do things like generate
a chart showing how much Bach I listened to month to month over a
specified time period, so wanting to do it in Excel makes sense (even
if it is not a serious app). I could of course write a VBScript to
write the data to an Excel workbook which has macros to generate the
charts, etc. - but it seems unnatural to split the code between 2
files.