Geoblock, or region lock, come into play for two cases: one, by blocking it to differentiate price in different markets (e.g. region lock on DVDs), two, by blocking entirely from certain market for licensing, legal, or various other reasons. I won’t go into details for the first bit, as the history has taught us, it didn’t work even with the physical format. Even now, people are searching to find a better subscription deal with VPNs. But the real issue, the one is daunting, is the disorganized licensing agreements.

Major music streaming platforms are operating internationally. When you can find an album on the platform of your choice, normally subscribers expect other users would be able to find the same album from any parts of the world, so long as they have the same subscription. That is not the case with geoblock. Some artists, albums, or tracks of an album can be left out in some markets or countries without much notice.

Again, as I have laid out in the previous post, most consumers won’t subscribe to a secondary music streaming service for few selections of albums; they’d just pirate the few. Retaining listeners’ attention should be the primary objective of the rights holder. Streaming services will always be compared against piracy, despite the fact that the latter is simply illegal. The key is the instant gratification. Should the rights holder need to geoblock certain music in the certain region, they may as well add a link to a YouTube video as an alternative, or simply delist the music from all regions. Confusion is enemy to gratification.