Thanks for the prompt replies. I managed to work the problem out. For the
record, my server was running Samba 3.0.12, with my clients mounting the shares
via the cifs driver included in the 2.6 kernel. It seems that to get taglib to
parse the tags, all I had to do was change the default permissions that files
and directories on the share used. I initially ruled this avenue out, as I had
tried Samba with "unix extensions" disabled and enabled, and it had no effect.
However, after trying shfs and seeing taglib working properly, I thought it was
worth another go. The options I used to mount the CIFS share in fstab changed
from this:

credentials=/root/.samba-credentials/strawberry-stash,uid=micand,gid=users

to this:

credentials=/root/.samba-credentials/strawberry-stash,uid=micand,gid=users,ro,
file_mode=0444,dir_mode=0555

For the uid, gid, file_mode, or dir_mode options to work, "unix extensions" must
be disabled in Samba. Both Amarok 1.2.3 and wxMusik 0.4.1.0 worked perfectly
after this modification to the mounting options.

Thanks again,

Jeff