Rosa 17.3 XFCE as music server - no logged in user

[pbft]

I have a jukebox program (from 1999) that plays music using a web interface. That means that the 'play' (or mpg123) command is invoked by the web server process, and there may not be an active X session. This has worked fine in a long series of Linux installs over the last 15+ years, but can't get it to work in this version. It appears that pulseaudio is the culprit. I see pulseaudio log messages about config files in the web server's home directory (/var/www/.config/pulse), for instance.

If I log into the server with an X11 session, I can configure the audio properly with pavucontrol and I can play music from the command line.

How do I get the web server process to play audio? I've added www-data to the audio group, but I'm fresh out of ideas. Can I bypass pulseaudio and use alsa directly?

[pbft]

OK, update:
I've given up on pulseaudio. It seems to be too focused on having a logged-in user with an X11 session, which in my case is irrelevant. I uninstalled pulseaudio and I'm just using alsa. Pretty near everything works - my web server process can play audio as can the logged in user. However, two more problems:

1. I can't change the volume. Alsamixer runs and shows all the right settings, but it doesn't affect volume.

1. There must be a logged in user to play music, and the screensaver kills the audio.

I really just want this to be a music server, like I've had for many years.