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Country restrictions?

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Country restrictions?

Hello.

 

I've been a happy spotify user for a long long time but today I noticed something that made me very weary. As usual I went to the discover tab to listen to some new bands. I saw a band who looked cool (Masters of reality) and wanted to give it a go so I pressed play and nothing happened. 

Capturar.JPG

 

Note it was on my suggested bands for being similar to band I really love (QOTSA). 

 

So, like I was saying... When I pressed play nothing happen as if it was some problem with my connection. I checked if everything was working fine and indeed it was... I pressed a few times and even tried a different band and this one again (figuring it could've been some issue loading the tracks and this way I'd be able to force the transfer again) but it didn't work (the other band played, obviously). 

Capturar2.JPG

So I got confused and tried to open the band page and select a track manually to see what would happen. And this is what happen:

Capturar3.JPG

 

So apparently this band isn't available in Portugal. As far as I can remember this is the first time I've ever had such an error. And this makes me quite upset... I know this isn't the best argument I can use but I actually PAY for this service. I feel happy with spotify... I have a premium account, and I can listen to all the music I have time to. I haven't had many issues and I reccomend it to all my friends. It's one of the best ways I know to listen to music while not pirating it. 

 

Region lock is one of the most bull**** things a company can do. It's a forceful way to give money to people who don't deserve it. If I pay spotify I assume some of my money goes to the artist. Some other portion to its publisher. Or maybe just to the publisher and then they give a cut to the artis. I don't really care about what happens behind the scenes. My money is used to give me access to music and I can't imagine a reason why some track/album/artist might not be available in my country.

 

I don't know if other users have this issue. I don't know if other services (such as Google Music) also share these restrictions. Maybe it's an old problem that I just found out about. 

 

What I'd would love to know is:

  • Do other users also have these issues?;
  • If someone could explain to me why I'm denied access to this content;
  • Is there anything I can do to "fix" this? (I don't have a lot of hopes on this one);
  • Why is it that a song I can't access is suggested to me (not to mention it's the 2nd suggested band for that artist)? 

I can (and do) tolerate a lot of problems but region lock just drives me crazy. For a long time I thought Spotify is awesome and now I feel like I'm back in 1999...

 

I'm sorry in advance if I'm overeacting but I really hate to think I'm going to start having regional restrictions on this service. 

 

Ps: The spell check doesn't seem to be working so please bear with me for some mistakes. English isn't my native language.

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Hi there,
Welcome at the Spotify Community!

 

No problems with your English, I can read it 🙂

 

I'm sorry to hear your unhappy with some things at Spotify. I know it's not funny when music is not available in your country, however it's not up to Spotify to decide this. The music label, artist, or legal owner decide where they want their music to be available.

Unfortunately I have to tell you that the only thing you can do is to ask the music label, artist, or legal owner to make the music available in your country. 

 

I am not sure why that music got suggested to you (maybe it just doesn't check if it's available to you).

I will ask around to give an answer on this question.

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Marked as solution

Hi there,
Welcome at the Spotify Community!

 

No problems with your English, I can read it 🙂

 

I'm sorry to hear your unhappy with some things at Spotify. I know it's not funny when music is not available in your country, however it's not up to Spotify to decide this. The music label, artist, or legal owner decide where they want their music to be available.

Unfortunately I have to tell you that the only thing you can do is to ask the music label, artist, or legal owner to make the music available in your country. 

 

I am not sure why that music got suggested to you (maybe it just doesn't check if it's available to you).

I will ask around to give an answer on this question.

As a fellow European that likes Japanese music I can confirm everyone has these issues. Usually unavailable tracks are just very well hidden.

 

If artists have an empty profile, I found out artists with a profile image usually have an unavailable album or single with the same album cover as the profile image. These can be found with google by searching for "spotify [artist name]". For example, if I search for "spotify stereopony" (a Japanese band currently unavailable here in the Netherlands), I can still find one of their albums, but with all the songs greyed out.

However, it's really odd that you can find that album in your suggestions. They are usually pretty hard to find. I think that's a bug.

 

 

Apart from the rights owners deciding to allow Spotify to stream the music to your region, there is only one way to "fix" unavailable albums. If you have the mp3 files of the album you can add them to your Spotify local files (you can add folders in your preferences in Spotify). If the track and artist names in the file's metadata match those in Spotify's database, Spotify usually automatically links the files to the database entries, allowing you to play the unavailable album. If they are linked the artist and/or album name is not grayed out in your local file list.

Of course you can also play unlinked songs and even add them to playlists, but if they are linked, you or people you share the playlist with can also see the song in the playlist if they also have the song linked, or if the song is available in their area. If the song is not linked only the computer you added it on will have it added to the playlist.

 

 

Hopefully this information helps you somewhat.

Thanks to both of you for taking some time to clarify that. In part I guess that it's kinda obvious... I wondered if it could be some poor negociation on the part of spotify but probably the greedy labels are at fault. 

 

Of all the ways content can be managed I always thought that country restrictions is just the sadest of them all. Oh well... I guess I'll just have to access this album by "other" means... 

 

Thanks again for the help and sorry if I was quick to lash out. It's just very frustrating.

I was looking for a solution for the same problem, and unfortunately I came up with the same sad solution. We have to find it through "other" ways. From one Swedish service to another famous Swedish service. If you know what I mean. Thanks for sharing your problem.

So, in my search to the same question as you, I found this:

 

Source

 

"Some important changes to the Spotify music catalogue

Next week we are going to be making some changes to our music catalogue that we feel are important to communicate clearly. Unfortunately we are going to be removing a number of songs from our catalogue and adding country restrictions to some tracks, which may make them unplayable for you.

Why are we doing this?

The changes are being made so that we implement all the proper restrictions that are required by our label deals. Some tracks will be restricted from play in certain countries, this means that if you share tracks with friends who are in other countries it’s possible that they won’t be able to listen to them. The reason for this is that our agreements contain strict rules as to what tracks can and can’t be played in various countries that we are now capable of implementing. These restrictions are a legacy from when most music was sold on tapes and CDs and they have continued over into streaming music, our hope is that one day restrictions like this will disappear for good.

Additionally, some of the music that has been delivered to us had been delivered by mistake even though the artist did not want their music to be included in a streaming service. In order to respect the decisions of the artist we now have to remove those tracks. We have not lost any licenses and no labels have stopped working with us, this is just a matter of updating our catalogue to be in line with the agreements we actually have. In hindsight it would have been better to remove this in October when we launched publicly, we realize this now and apologize to you for not doing it sooner.

How will this affect you?

A number of the tracks that you’ve listened to previously will no longer be available for streaming, these tracks have already been removed from the search function. If you have some of these songs in playlists we will try to automatically replace those songs with versions from albums that we are not removing so you don’t lose the song. If there is no replacement available then the song will appear in red on your playlists.

What’s next?

From this point on there are no plans to remove any more music and our catalogue will only grow from here. We already have music from all the major labels and a vast majority of the independent labels licensed, between them we have millions of tracks that we still can add into Spotify. Now it’s a matter of importing that music into our system, which we are doing on an ongoing basis in an effort to add thousands of albums a week. We continue to work hard to sign deals with more labels and will work with the labels we have signed to fill the holes in our catalogue.

Our dream is to create a music experience where users can play whatever music they want, whenever they want, it may take awhile but we will keep working at it. Please feel free to leave any questions you may have on the blog or join the conversation on our forum if you require more information."

 

 

TL;DR

 

Labels, and seldom artists, are the ones region locking songs. 

If you look further into a vpn (virtual private network) I have been led to believe you can listen to the region locked music if you change your region to a where the music isn't region locked you should be able to listen to it

That's quite right, it works for me. I would otherwise be completely locked out of Spotify in the Bahamas.

I can say that actually contactin labels can work out. If they see demand, they will think about responding to it. I have a Japanese artist whose stuff was not available on spotify and his new albums are now globally on it. Fans did bombard him on Facebook about spotify. 

Honestly the best way to get around this is on a computer. on your spotify there's a spot for local files, which is any .mp3 on your computer. You can add local files to playlists on the pc but it won't show up on your phone or another device unless you play it on your computer and add it through the spotify app on the other device. I use this method when adding songs I create to my playlist, but you can use it for anything. 

yeah but on a long run this is not a good solution. I want my artists to actually get paid,, which they do if the songs are ON spotify and streamed from there. Also, the whole purpose of the service is exactly that you shouldn't need to have mp3s on your computer in the future. The best would be if all distributors realized that country restrictions are a stupid thing in the 21st century of globalization.

It su*ks real hard. I'm in Brazil and more than half of Manowar discography isn't available here. And Manowar is a particularly big band, specially in Brazil where they've got a huge fanbase. Anyway, aside from other major failures I notice in Spotify service, I have changed to Apple Music

@andresmessina 

 

Good news!

 

Spotify is now available in The Bahamas

 

You can read more information about Spotify's launch in new markets in this news article: Spotify Expands International Footprint, Bringing Audio to 80+ New Markets

MattSudaSpotify Star
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