How do I approach region-locked music?

[jill-rae]

As a Canadian, I want to listen to certain Canadian artists, like the Devin Townsend Band. 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/571aCWzg7bObPJl5RAs0ZZ

All of the albums belonging to this artist are not available in my region -- who would be best to contact to get the rights available for this music in my region, especially considering where this artist originates from? The label? The artist?

[Jacob]

Hey @jill-rae, thanks for coming to the Spotify Community!

Missing or unavailable music is almost always a decision by the artist/label to withhold the content from Spotify. Sometimes it's temporarily unavailable while they sort out legal issues or correct metadata, in which case it'll be back up as soon as they resubmit it to Spotify. If you're looking for some more information, it might be a good idea to contact the artist or label directly and ask why the music isn't on Spotify. You might also be interested in supporting this idea, which suggests a simpler method for requesting albums missing from Spotify. For more information on missing content, please check out this support article.

Please let me know if I can help with anything else! Happy listening 🙂

[jill-rae]

Thanks, I'll try that. It's just weird because my friends in the UK and US can see/listen to the albums, but I cannot!

[alveolate]

that "support article" is literally 2 sentences.

tbqh, spotify could do a LOT more with their app to lessen the frustration of unavailable content. provide more info, such as how to contact the label/artist directly, and whether the track/album is just being temporary spoofy due to some backend wrangling. in such cases, there should be a way to indicate "user wishes to be notified when track becomes available".

even if the legalese is too much bs for average users to read, just say that: it's complicated. we don't want to blame spotify, so give us someone appropriate to blame! otherwise, spotify could/should be considered complicit (whether unintentional or otherwise) in adding frustration to the users.

[Jacob]

@alveolate, thanks for your response.

Every artist is a different case and there are different ways to contact all of them that Spotify doesn't keep track of. If you have a specific artist in mind, let me know and I can do some digging to try to find a contact avenue 🙂