The question is in the title, pretty much 
. I’ve got experience in general electronics and soldering, but absolutely no idea about programming. Nevertheless, I thought it would be cool to try and make an MP3 player, using an ATmega328 and a VS1002 MP3 Decoder.
Given that I’m new to all this, so screwups are inevitable, I wanted to get breakout boards for the components. I now Sparkfun stock one for the VS1002, but could I basically remove all the additional components from a 328 Arduino board and use it to program the ATmega so that it could be used with the VS1002 as an MP3 player?
Thanks in advance for any help 
Why would you remove all the components from the Arduino? It would be easier to do what you want to do and leave those components on the board. Most of them are for power regulating, decoupling, or just peripheral components for supporting the FTDI chip.
The great thing about Arduino is that it’s a proven, tested hardware platform. Even if you don’t want to program it using the Arduino IDE, you can still use the Arduino board and just write ‘C’ to it like you would a normal ATmega328. I do this frequently when trying to mock up prototypes.
Hope this helps, and let us know if you have other questions.
Thanks for the reply. I’ve decided to base it on Sparkfun’s MP3 Development Board instead and use an LPC2148, but remove the FM transmitter and replace the colour LCD with a Nokia 3310 display and the accelerometer and 3-way navigation switch for a d-pad. This way I can just base it on the Sparkfun schematics (something I’m familiar with) and concentrate on programming the PIC (something I need to learn).
Cool, it’s always a good idea to start from a known good hardware platform.
FYI, the LPC2148 is an ARM7 core, not a PIC. Not sure if that’s important to you. ARM7 is much more powerful than PIC or AVR (like the ATmega168). The MP3 Development board actually runs at 60 MHz rather than the 16 MHz on the Arduino board.
Good luck with your project!