Does anyone know where I could get a free mp3 loading/playing library ?

There is a free library called libamp which works w/ allegro...

have a look at the addons section of the allegro site:

http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/

I don''t know of any other free lib since the Frauenhofer ISS site only provides players/encoders, sorry.

Try
http://www.un4seen.com/music/
and the Bass lib, its free for freeware, cheap for shareware and expensive for commercial software, cant get any fairer than that.