Trying to get PHP code to recognize musical notes

I am trying to use functions like substr_count and strpos to find the number and location of musical notes in text, specifically the musical note that looks like this ... ♪ ...which I believe is an eighth note. I can't get this to work consistently in my PHP code. For example:

In some of my PHP scripts, the following line will tell me how many musical notes are in $myText...
$j=substr_count($myText,'♪')
...yet in other of my PHP scripts, the same line does not work for me.

I...

Trying to get PHP code to recognize musical notes

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