We don’t have Spotify in Croatia. But that’s fine, there are other ways to listen to music. Even if you want to do it on the move.

However, sometimes (well, most times) you desperately want just the thing you can’t have. It didn’t happen to me with Spotify until I found out Apple was determined to destroy them (through lobbying and in order to justify its acquisition of Beats). And the plan was/is to get the music-industry execs to stand up against free music streaming (which is actually payed by users’ listening to ads).

Apple soon came under FTC scrutiny (http://www.businessinsider.com/r-apples-beats-music-deals-under-us-scrutiny-bloomberg-2015-5) for using its position to disadvantage others.

That Apple’s bullying made me a Spotify fan.

So I decided to try it out.

I had to use TunnelBear to make myself appear to come from a Spotify-friendly country such as USA. Actually, my country might as well be Spotify-friendly but licensing issues are making it seem as a non-friendly. When I say, “licensing issues”, I refer to those collective rights management companies.

Here comes the paradox

The problem with issues that are man-made and profit driven is that they usually don’t make sense and thus result in a paradox.

Which is exactly what happens with geographic restrictions imposed by the rights management companies.

I managed to trick Spotify to grant me access to those cherished songs and their copyright after which I started to explore Spotify’s huge database.

After checking for Al Bano, Danny Tenaglia, Nick Drake etc and having found all of them, I entered (just for the thrill of it) “Miso Kovac” and “Silente”.

/Miso Kovac is a Croatian pop legend who made his fame singing Dalmatian chansons back in the 70s and 80s; Silente are a young Croatian up-and-coming rock band/

I actually found both Miso Kovac and Silente on Spotify and a dozens of their songs were suggested for listening. Do you see the paradox already?

I had to trick the system and make it believe that I was accessing Spotify from USA so that I could listen to Croatian music. On the other hand, I wasn’t able to do the same thing by letting Spotify determine where I was coming from i.e. Croatia. In other words, due to licensing, copyright, geographic restrictions and so on, you are allowed to listen to a Croatian artist if, and only if, you are trying to do so outside of Croatia.