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SoundCloud has banned VPN access
- xfeeefeee 10mo agoOver five years of paid SoundCloud here, I thought something was wrong with my setup. If this continues I'll have to cancel, basically. What a pain.
- voltagexd 10mo agosame here. been a paying customer for 2 years, a soundcloud listener for 5+. this is where i switch back to downloading music off russian pirate websites.
- jijijijij 10mo ago> this is where i switch back to downloading music off russian pirate websites. As a bonus you may even get discount codes for your VPN! For real tho, fuck all those rent-seeking control freaks. Piracy was almost dead, we had a good deal. But no, it's never enough, so here we are. Also, some piracy boards are actually pretty steady, nice and cool communities, and listing to local files feels way more intentional.
- shelled 10mo agoSoundCloud once messed up a huge song import - hundreds (as in more than 9 hundreds). There was no way to batch clean/edit, or even clear/nuke (i.e delete everything). Support refused to help. They clearly said they "won't" do it and they helpfully asked me to do it one by one because that was the way users were supposed to do it. I kept requesting that they could just delete everything and I would set up everything again because at that point my profile looked all garbage and noise. They refused and stopped responding. I found a CxO email and mailed seeking help. I never received a reply. A few days later, I just deleted that really old account. I used to use the site very regularly since the beginning. But after that, they never even came to my mind until I saw this here on HN.
- majorchord 10mo agoYou can't just blanket block all VPN access, that's not how the internet works... they could pick some common/well-known providers of VPN services and block their IPs/ASN/etc., but you can't just flip a switch and make all forms of VPN/proxy stop working, as there's no way to tell with certainty that someone is using one.
- protocolture 10mo agoGEOIP providers often sell a database of known VPN/Proxy endpoints. They take the approach of shoot first, ask questions later. Using one of these databases bans a lot of legitimate ip addresses that have seen been the source of known VPN or proxy traffic. Its not perfect ofc, but its not meant to be. Its usually just used as a safety blanket for geoblocked intellectual property, like netflix.
- itake 10mo agoI connect to my residential ISP in the USA via VPN all the time and have never had issues with being blocked for VPN use. Maybe they mean commercial VPN providers that run on the cloud?
- oefrha 10mo ago[flagged]
- fragmede 10mo agoTailscale is really not that hard to set up. There's an Apple TV app for it, even. And who doesn't have some friend in another state or country that would like an Apple TV?
- cyberrock 10mo agoObviously not everyone have friends in all of the countries they want to tunnel to (or want to ask them). Otherwise these VPN services wouldn't exist.
- 999900000999 10mo agoThey blocked *some* vpns. I was able to get it working just by switching location with my vpn provider.
- mig39 10mo agoDoesn't reddit block VPNs as well?
- hdra 10mo agoi tunnel my internet through linode with wireguard - reddit blocks me if i'm not signed in. with soundcloud, i just got a generic 403 from cloudfront combine that with country-level internet filter, the internet is getting harder and harder to use :(
- rjh29 10mo agoWell, most sites are going to block VPS IP spaces (which are published online) as it's ~100% bot activity.
- miyuru 10mo agoah if they are using cloudfront, they must be using the AWS managed WAF rule, which is pretty bad. I used that once and got in trouble with the client since the ruleset was over blocking.
- extraduder_ire 10mo agoWorks for me most of the time. A couple of months ago, there was a period where a subset of the exit IPs were blocked for a short period each.
- timbit42 10mo agoIME, only if you're not logged in.
- elashri 10mo agoThe irony is that I tried to access the link here but reddit blocks VPN access aggressively.
- gruez 10mo agoAcross 3 VPN providers I use, none of them have issues accessing reddit anonymously. There are nodes/regions that are blocked, but finding a working server isn't hard.
- suslik 10mo agoMight be you're logged in? I often hit a block when using (proton) vpn if I'm logged out but not otherwise.
- alex-robbins 10mo agoCare to name them? I use Mullvad, and I love them, but their exit nodes are routinely blocked by Reddit and streaming services.
- pixel_popping 10mo agoMostly VPNs that don't show their infrastructure publicly (or at least their IP pools) seem to be working across Reddit.
- gruez 10mo agoOf the largest providers[1], PIA and nordvpn work fine for me. [1] https://ipinfo.io/tools/vpn-providers-detected https://ipinfo.io/tools/vpn-providers-detected
- prosody 10mo agoWhat's the motivation for blocking VPN read access for this and other services? Are AI scrapers using commercial VPNs to get around rate limiting?
- danpalmer 10mo agoLegislation. If a country requires age verification, identity verification, moderation, etc, it's easy enough to either block that traffic or enforce the local laws. However users can easily circumvent this with a VPN. For some countries, this traffic is still in scope, and so the only real way to prevent it is to block or impose the restrictions on all VPN users. Could also be spam/abuse prevention. Credential stuffing often goes through VPNs, signup over VPN is a strong signal for future abuse or issues in various ways.
- rendaw 10mo agoYeah, but age verification for _music_?
- digitalsushi 10mo agowell, what if an artist put something controversial in the lyrics, like, something that radicalizes a minor into developing something maligned like, agency, or self awareness
- IAmBroom 10mo agoTipper Gore, is that you?
- jihadjihad 10mo agoWere you around in the 90s? Remember when Marilyn Manson was blamed for Columbine?
- Analemma_ 10mo agoI'm guessing you're on the younger side and don't remember: there was an enormous moral panic about music in the 90s. There were ostensibly serious, sober Congressional hearings about it. Multiple people (e.g. Tipper Gore) made it their specific political hobbyhorse. It was the thing corrupting the youth, before the pivot to video games after Columbine. It's why we still have those black-and-white stickers on CDs (to the extent anyone buys CDs anymore). I'd like to like that won't come back, but voting rights for women are back on the table, apparently, and SoundCloud is apparently worth age-gating, so I guess not.
- thenthenthen 10mo agoStrange, it works here (Taipei based vpn and logged in)
- october8140 10mo agoI think it's the thought that counts. Presumably they will get better at blocking all VPNs.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoAnd VPNs will get better at avoiding them. In the military world, this is called "C-squared" (counter-countermeasures).
- syntaxing 10mo agoEven Russia and Iran has issues blocking VPN country wide…curious what SoundCloud is going to be able to do. I’m guessing it’s to block AI scrapers but ironically, they have way more resources than your customers. SoundCloud will end up pissing off their paying customers and AI bots will still be able to scrape.
- arcknighttech 10mo ago[dead]
- OhioMan2943 10mo agoFinancial times does as well for me on certain browsers but not others. Pretty annoying.
- lightyrs 10mo agoLast night I was blocked from HBOMAX (or whatever brand they go by these days) for being on a VPN. That was the first time I've ever encountered something like that on HBOMAX. I wonder if there is some coordinating event here.
- rsync 10mo agoDid the error condition actually call out "VPN use" ? Did the HBO UI actually call out, by that term, a VPN ? ... or were you simply using a VPN and that's the most likely culprit for a general failure of the service ? Genuinely curious ...
- dewey 10mo agoHaving it spelled out as "Are you on a VPN?" on streaming services is pretty common these days. I guess with the popularity of consumer VPNs that term isn't just a technical one any more.
- lightyrs 10mo agoThey specifically used "VPN" in the error message but I can't remember the exact text of the whole message.
- rekabis 10mo agoYarr… when this happens to ye, it’s time to sail the high seas!
- beej71 10mo agoThey're doing everything they can to make piracy the best option.
- pixel_popping 10mo agoExactly, and you should go deeper and encourage absolutely everyone in your surrounding to drop the service.
- 0_____0 10mo agoUhhh. Unless people are now using SC completely differently from how I was using it, the media people publish on SC is far too niche to be available via piracy.
- rekabis 10mo agoThen people need to coordinate. People with active SC accounts need to talk to people who can take ripped files and torrent them. I don’t have an SC account myself. But get me a file and I will gladly torrent it for others. Some of my torrents have been active for well over a decade, and have hit ratios in the tens of thousands.
- LightBug1 10mo agoArrrrrrrhhhhhh me hearty !!!
- ThatMedicIsASpy 10mo agoI don't even need to be blocked. I can't jump ahead so I just download and keep or discard.
- diimdeep 10mo agoNot the first, Patreon also banned VPN YouTube, Reddit - locked out, requiring to log into account, on pretense of security and care concerns, yeah to identify and track VPN users.
- big-chungus4 10mo agolink for actual people https://www.reddit.com/r/SoundCloudMusic/comments/1pltd19/soundcloud_just_banned_vpn_access/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SoundCloudMusic/comments/1pltd19/so...
- vpShane 10mo agoShould be interesting to see how the internet blocks those of us who don't want to be fingerprinted, ID'd, or reveal our home IP addresses. YouTube already blocks embeds to login and prove I'm not a bot, funnily it doesn't work and embeds never play. Reddit will block me unless I'm signed in which I don't mind too much, but the daily beast and many others block me which is a shame because I'm a real human being using the internet as intended. Instead of blocking or limiting features to whitelist users with approved behavioral patterns and limit / block those that don't -- such as loading a page and immediately commenting or doing things that normal humans don't do, they block IP addresses and ASNs. I just close the browser tab and remind myself not to waste my time caring, there'll be other platforms. My router is setup for WireGaurd and it'll never be disabled. Shame on SoundCloud
- bilekas 10mo ago> which is a shame because I'm a real human being using the internet as intended. This is the main issue here, the web has become actively hostile to normal people in the quest to monetize every second of online activity.
- IAmBroom 10mo ago"Actively hostile" is another of the common myths. See also: "corporations are evil". "Completely indifferent" and "Corporations are completely amoral" are more accurate. It's the difference between someone trying to drown you, versus someone trying to fish while you drown just off the bank. Same end, of course.
- forshaper 10mo agoI don't think they're evil, but to say that consumers aren't the fish seems a stretch.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- OkayPhysicist 10mo ago
- bird0861 10mo agostares in Lidarr
- russelg 10mo agoDoesn't really fulfill the same niche Soundcloud does. Most content on SC is non-commercial or just simply not available on any streaming service. Lidarr relies on people ripping this music, and also adding the metadata to Musicbrainz, which just simply isn't going to happen for most SC uploads.
- 0_____0 10mo agoI thought for a moment while reading these comments that somehow SC had completely changed in terms of content and type of user. People seem to think it's a Spotify-like or something. I consumed essentially audio shitposts and DJ mix sets on SC, stuff that you're not going to find published in a pirateable form...
- cedws 10mo agoI tried creating a SoundCloud account recently for uploading DJ sets to and it just outright wouldn't let me. Didn't matter whether I was or wasn't on a VPN, or whether I had clean cookies. Crappy bot detection. You can be sure I'm never paying for such a hostile service.
- yeasku 10mo agoUploadig dj sets with comercially released music to Soundcloud is not allowed.
- pixel_popping 10mo agoWell, goodbye SoundCloud (and all services doing the same thing).
- devwastaken 10mo agoirony is this is posted on reddit, who also blocks VPN’s
- lagniappe 10mo agoIronic posting that on reddit who also blocks vpn access.
- paganel 10mo agoStill seems to work via the desktop interface while accessing the old.reddit version, at least it worked a couple of days ago for me, I can't speak for the new web version nor for their phone app, cause I'm not using those.
- elcapitan 10mo agoFor me also the normal web version (non-old) works, at least with Mullvad. edit: Ah, it's based on login status
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- sebzim4500 10mo agoI'm in the UK, so I access Reddit through an Irish VPN all the time and have never had issues.
- celsoazevedo 10mo agoAre you logged in? The block is usually for logged out users.
- thebruce87m 10mo agoHave you tried old.reddit.com ? I use that exclusively and it doesn’t seem to mind vpns.
- socalgal2 10mo agoI keep wishing “privacy” company, Apple, would release a VPN such that no business would be able to block it as they’d lose too many customers
- misnome 10mo agoThey… do?
- fourside 10mo agoThis comment would be more useful if you have the name of the product or linked to it. I’m also not aware of this offering and wasn’t able to find information on it.
- stewartbracken 10mo agoPrivate relay is an Apple VPN-like service that only covers iOS safari. That means the SoundCloud app or desktop usage will not receive any privacy benefits.
- black3r 10mo agoPrivate Relay also works in macOS Safari.
- agiacalone 10mo agoJust tested Soundcloud with a PWA using iOS Safari and Private Relay enabled. It works fine, albeit a few annoying popups asking to download the app.
- lvl155 10mo agoI am so sick of these IP blocks. Same thing in Discord where a lot of servers deploy third-rate services like Double Counter that’s effectively a malware host. There’s nothing wrong with using VPN. I don’t want my IP exposed when my ISP doesn’t allow me to freely change it like they used to even a couple of years ago.
- taikahessu 10mo agoIronically, I can't read the Reddit post with my VPN.
- londons_explore 10mo agoI'm pretty sure reddits reason for blocking VPN's is they want the AI scrapers to pay them for a data feed. They also block data center IP's
- Aurornis 10mo ago> I'm pretty sure reddits reason for blocking VPN's is they want the AI scrapers to pay them for a data feed. Signing up for Reddit through a VPN has been difficult to impossible for a long time. The amount of abuse that comes through VPN-sourced IP addresses is much higher than normal. It's common to block it on any social media site.
- braebo 10mo agoMullvad can typically get through Reddit security after switching nodes for a bit.
- raverbashing 10mo agoThey block but they do allow you to browse if you're logged in
- orliesaurus 10mo agoi’ve watched this VPN arms race get weird over the years... as a user i feel like the license wars always spill over onto my connection. rights holders keep demanding geo fences and identity checks... service providers comply because they don't want to get sued. BUT... the blunt tool is to block whole swaths of IPs... then we all scramble. i think the conversation around Apple or any single company saving us is missing the point. ALSO... even if a big platform rolled out an anonymizing proxy... regulators would still push for carve outs... copyright exemptions... law enforcement taps. the root is the business model... ad targeting... licensing... fraud detection... all of which depend on tying a real person to a real IP. HOWEVER... if enough of us treat VPN use as normal... the calculus changes. blocking a few percent of weirdos is easy... blocking half your paying users is not. i don't know the answer... but i suspect it's going to get more fragmented before it gets better.
- pvibby762 10mo agoYour mileage may vary. Logged in and listened to a couple of tracks DHCP VPN which exits in Denver using Surfshark at 64.44.x.x about 1600 miles away.
- everdrive 10mo agoMore will follow. I hope you collected what you need. For anything truly valuable, record the audio during playback and manually enter the metadata.
- Liquix 10mo ago> record the audio during playback and manually enter the metadata there are more elegant solutions similar to yt-dlp. scdl is very user friendly and automatically embeds metadata. https://github.com/scdl-org/scdl https://github.com/scdl-org/scdl https://github.com/miraclx/freyr-js https://github.com/miraclx/freyr-js
- siva7 10mo agoIf this is true, i will cancel my subscription. I'm using tailscale and certainly won't use a service that wants to dictate me how to use my device.
- angry_octet 10mo agoIf you're using tailscale it's a true VPN, not a proxy, and it won't have any impact on you. If you're using the Mullvad add-on that's a different situation.
- NoteyComplexity 10mo agoJust cancel it. Soundcloud these days is nothing but a spambot filled website that have ripped countless users’ tracks and scam to earn fake followers, which the platform doesn’t block these bot but instead shallow banning proper users. The support is also nonexistent and my support ticket hasn’t being been responded for more than an year. I ended up trashed my account because I got shadow banned for no reason while they keep on stripping off basic features. Some of the users in my community also faced the similar stories. Unless there is an irreplaceable feature in SoundCloud you rely on, I see no reason to use it.
- ck2 10mo agobtw I've wondered if Cloudflare Warp is considered to be a real VPN by VPN-blockers since it's not true privacy and just an "acceleration" tunnel aren't Cloudflare exit nodes also content edge servers so impossible to block?
- LightBug1 10mo agoJust cancelled subscription and uninstalled. Thanks for the heads up.
- platevoltage 10mo agoHow does this help Soundcloud's bottom line? They aren't a streaming service that curates and licenses's content intended for specific regions are they?
- e44858 10mo agoThey have a lot of user-created music that doesnt exist anywhere else. Maybe they're trying to sell that dataset to AI companies for training their models. If they allow non-residential IPs, those potential customers could just scrape their site instead.
- kristopolous 10mo agoOh this is why I can't download some podcasts from China. I worked around it but it was a pain
- technonerd 10mo agoSoundcloud got breached >However, the company's response included a configuration change that disrupted VPN connectivity to the site. SoundCloud has not provided a timeline for when VPN access will be fully restored. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/soundcloud-confirms-breach-after-member-data-stolen-vpn-access-disrupted/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/soundcloud-co...
- dgellow 10mo agoVPNs is such a shady industry, I really don't blame companies for blocking them. 99% of people using a VPN do not understand they are giving all their traffic to a random company in a jurisdiction they can't verify, with privacy policies they didn't read, operated by people they've never heard of, based entirely on marketing claims and affiliate-driven "reviews". There is pretty much zero regulatory oversight. The ownership structure of VPN companies is opaque, often owned by holding companies. For example Kape Technologies owns ExpressVPN, PIA, CyberGhost, etc.
- Anamon 10mo ago... on the other hand, there's the fact that millions of people can't meaningfully participate on the Internet without one. Many VPN providers may be shady, but none as shady as the governments and corporations that drive people to using them.