Here’s How Easy It Is to Enjoy Unblocked Music Sites & Apps

The Internet is full of amazing music streaming websites and apps. Some of the most popular examples would include Pandora Radio, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Music, Radio.com, SoundCloud Go, Napster US, and TuneIn Radio.

It’s just a shame that – quite often – you can only enjoy what they offer after you unblocked the music sites in question.

That’s right – depending on various factors – you might not have full access to any music streaming website or app you want.

Why Are Music Sites & Apps Blocked Anyway?

Usually, you won’t be able to access various websites or apps because of geo-restrictions and/or network restrictions.

Geo-Restrictions

Geo-restrictions are a way to restrict your access to various content based on your geographical location. That kind of data is associated with your IP address, so a website can easily keep you from connecting to it, or using some of its features based on that.

An example of that would be if you lived in Poland, and tried to access Amazon Music, a service that is only available in the UK, the US, Canada, Germany, France, India, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, and Japan.

What’s more, geo-blocks can affect you when you’re on vacation too. Say you’re from the US, and you go on vacation to Italy for 3 weeks.

During that time, you will not be able to access a service like iHeartRadio or Pandora Radio, as they aren’t available in Italy. Spotify might be a bit more “forgiving,” but you can only use the service abroad up to 14 days. Afterwards, you either need to change the country registered on your account, or upgrade to a Premium account.

Why are geo-blocks enforced?

It usually has to do with networking and copyright regulations, but it can also be caused by upkeep fees and various taxes that keep music streaming companies from offering their services in other countries.

Oh yeah, and geo-restrictions can affect app store applications too – not just websites. Basically, some apps might only be available for download in certain countries.

Network Restrictions

Sometimes, you might not be able to access your favorite website or app even if you technically don’t have to worry about geo-blocks.

How come? Well, it all has to do with firewall restrictions. For example, if you’re at work or school, music streaming websites could be blocked on your workplace or learning institution’s network.

Why? The usual reason is to stop employees or students from “slacking off.” However, that’s hardly fair. After all, maybe you’d just want to access these websites on your break. And maybe you work or study better while you get to listen to your favorite tunes.

Even worse, if you live on campus, you might have to put up with your favorite music websites and apps being blocked for months on end.

How to Listen to Unblocked Music on Restricted Sites & Apps

Since geo-blocks are enforced according to IP addresses, it seems pretty obvious that one way to bypass them is to mask your own IP address or geographical location. That might sound complicated, but it’s quite easy to do.

In fact, you have 2 ways to do it:

1. Use a VPN

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) will basically create a private, encrypted network over the Internet for you. This way, your IP address (along with your online traffic) will be hidden when you are online.

Basically, the moment you connect to a VPN server, your IP address will be replaced with the IP address of said VPN server. So, if you are from Poland, and you connect to a VPN server in the US, any website you will then connect to will think you have a US-based IP address.

Using a VPN will also be helpful if your ISP likes to throttle your bandwidth. That can happen if you use music streaming websites very often.

Since your ISP monitors your Internet traffic, they can see what you do online. When they notice you use “too much bandwidth,” they can start throttling your online speeds. They could do that until you “agree” to upgrade to a pricier subscription or data plan.

2. Use a Smart DNS

A Smart DNS service will essentially replace your default DNS, which is assigned to you by your ISP. In case you don’t know what a DNS is, it’s your Domain Name Server, and it’s responsible for translating domain names into IP addresses.

A Smart DNS can help you enjoy unblocked music websites and apps by intercepting your connection requests to a specific website. Once it does that, it will replace the data in the request that points to your real geo-location with data that points to a different geographical area.

That all happens fast, of course, and you don’t notice the process. All you get to experience is the fact that you can access a geo-blocked music streaming website from anywhere in the world.