Properly Update A Timestamp's Timezone - php

Question

I'm using the LastFM API to extract a user's recently listened-to tracks (http://www.last.fm/api/show/user.getRecentTracks) and am struggling to shift the timestamp to match my preferred timezone.
I've used date_default_timezone_set at the beginning of the code, but that seems to be ignored when I use strtotime. I'm using strtotime so that I can reformat the styling of the date as Last.FM provides it.
I've figured out how to manually offset to the correct time, via $date - 14400, but I'd like to understand what I'm missing and make the adjustment in the correct way.
Code follows. Greatly appreciate any assistance.
<?php date_default_timezone_set('America/New York'); ?>
<?php $xml = simplexml_load_file("http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=user.getrecenttracks&user=rj&api_key=b25b959554ed76058ac220b7b2e0a026");
echo '<ul>';
foreach($xml->recenttracks->track as $track) {
$title = $track->name;
$date = $track->date;
$date = strtotime($date);
$date = date("F jS, g:i a e", $date);
$string = '<li>'.$title.' - '.$date.'</li>';
echo $string;}
echo '</ul>';
?>

Answer 1

The problem is that the default timezone you set is used for both the incoming and outgoing translation.
To solve, use PHP timezone functions, and flip it about when reading / writing the time:
$oDateTime = new DateTime($track->date, new DateTimeZone(UTC'));
echo $oDateTime->format('F jS, g:i a e') . "\n"; // For debug: Will give the same back at you.
$oDateTime->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/New York'));
$date = $oDateTime->format('Y-m-d H:i:sP') . "\n"; // Will give the converted date
(You can also do it with date_timesone_set, but this looks neater).