Most bizarre subscription service I have ever dealt with.

[RBFranklin]

Let me start off with that Spotify is a very well made service and I enjoyed my time with my free account. So much in fact that I decided to support you with a subscription, purely for the service that you thus far offered me.

That is when the problems started ...

Right after I paid I could not access 80% of my music catalouge any more. Restarting the app had no effect. Apparently being a paying customer permanently locks your locale to the setting of your payment processor, while free users can travel without any issue. I spend a lot of time in Japan and that is what I used your service for: to listen to the Japanese catalouge when I was not at home where I have my physical collection. Now I can no longer do that simply because I wanted to support your service. I am even paying more than locals ( €10 compared to 円1000 which is about 6 - 7 euro )

So right now I am in Japan and I cannot access most of my catalouge, a huge headache I shouldn't have to deal with as a paying customer ...

The fact that a paying customer gets a lesser service than a free users completely boggles my mind, I have never had to deal with something like this before. I contacted customer support and the only solution they can give me is to provide a Japanese credit card number, which I do not have and which I am not interested in getting. Why does it have to be so hard simply being able to listen to the catalouge of the country I am in RIGHT NOW just like free users when I am a paying user?

The only solution seems to be to cancel my subscription and create a new free account so I can actually listen to the music I want to in the country I am in. A huge disservice and disincentive to subscribe for the people who travel a lot.

I do not understand even being a paying user the customer support doesn't seem to be interested in manually changing my locale to JP. It's not like I am doing this to pay less, I am paying almost twice as much as the locale I want to use. So if I can actually get someone authorized to do this and fix my locale you got my thanks and a permanent subscriber.

[user-removed]

Hi @RBFranklin! Thanks for writing us.

We understand you. However, keep in mind that the Spotify catalogue changes depending on the country your account is registered to. This is due to licensing reasons, and it's totally up to the labels and the artists to decide on which countries they make their full catalogue accessible.

When you subscribe to Premium, it's not possible to change the country settings on your account, as you previously registered a payment method of a determined country.

We'll make sure to pass your feedback on to the right team. If you have other questions, feel free to get back to us.

Take care.

[RBFranklin]

If you can't provide a very simple service then I'm afraid you lose a customer. I understand that there are licensing terms, but why do you refuse to offer a service to paying customers that you readily offer to free users? If I am paying you money for a service that I was promised ( with zero indication that the service would be downgraded beforehand ), I am located in Japan and want to listen to Japanese music that a free account can listen to without issue then what is the problem?

I've never seen a company so adverse to money before. This is beyond ridiculous, especially because now I am forced to make a new FREE account because my active premium won't let me listen to local music during my business trip. You are offering a superior service to FREE users.