How to subscribe to various media players' events like pause or track change?

Question

I want to write a platform independent library to subscribe to media player events. I want it to work on both windows and linux and want it to support as many media players as possible. Ideally I would have liked the library to work without the user's intervention (like configuring their music player) but I guess I can do without it.

I already know this is possible by enabling UNIX socket in vlc but I want to know how to do a similar thing with Windows Media Player. Please note that I want something like interprocess communication where Windows Media Player sends a notification to my library (or a socket) when a song is paused. I want to avoid polling for updates if possible.

Also it would be great if people can post similar methods for other media players like foobar.