[Icecast] Best method of grabbing Now Playing metadata with PHP?

[Richard G Elen]

Hi...

Can someone do me the favour of pointing us at a routine, library, 
script or technique that will grab Now Playing metadata (Title, Artist, 
Album) remotely (ie from another machine) from an Icecast 2.4.x server 
reliably for logging purposes, preferably using PHP?

Ideally we would grab the metadata when it changes - all the methods 
we've tried so far require us to poll the server so have not been as 
accurate as we would like. But there seem to be plenty of systems out 
there - Online Radio Box for example - that manage to get the start time 
exactly right, so it must be possible.

I'm not a programmer - I deal with music licensing mainly - so I will be 
passing details you give me on to our developer who is great on 
databases but not so good on the ins and outs of getting data out of 
Icecast. Needless to say, I have ploughed through the documentation 
provided but I evidently need something a bit more basic.

MANY thanks in advance for any help you can provide - and my apologies 
for my lack of knowledge and for having to ask such an apparently basic 
question.

--Richard E