controlling many LEDs on an individual basis
If you can spare one pin from your micro-controller then individually addressed LEDs are what you want!



Figure 1. Individually addressable LEDs. Source: Espruino.com.



Figure 2. Strip version.

See Sparkfun WS2812 datasheet for details on communicating with these.

I'm not familiar with these ones but a quick scan of the datasheet reveals


  When the refresh rate is 30fps, low speed model cascade number are not less than 512 points, high speed mode not
  less than 1024 points.