Spotify South Africa – How To Get It Ad Free

Want Spotify South Africa? It hasn’t launched in SA yet but here’s a detailed solution on how to get Spotify in South Africa.

Spotify is a great free online music streaming service that has become extremely popular over the last few years. Spotify South Africa hasn’t launched yet and the problem is that Spotify is only available in certain countries. If you live in the US or UK then you get access.

If you live in other countries, like South Africa, then Spotify block access to their service. There is a way around this though and we’ll take you through the steps below. Our solution will also allow you to listen to the free version of Spotify without all those annoying ads. Want to know how to get Spotify in South Africa? Check out the solution from Smart DNS.

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Why Isn’t Spotify Available In South Africa?

To understand how to make this work we first need to understand why Spotify isn’t available in South Africa. Spotify pay licensing fees for each song they play. These licenses are not valid world wide and work on a per country basis.

That means that each time Spotify want to make a song available in another country they need to pay for another license. That’s why they only pay for licenses and make their service available in countries where it makes economic sense for them.

They are legally obligated to block access to their service from countries where they don’t operate. They do this by checking the IP address of the device you are using (laptop, phone, PC, etc…) to see which country you’re in. When your IP address shows that you’re in South Africa the door slams shut.

The trick to accessing Spotify in South Africa is to make it look like you’re actually in the US. That brings us to step one in our solution.

Smart DNS - Spotif South AfricaSmart DNS Proxy

Smart DNS Proxy is a great service that unblocks loads of different services, including Spotify. Click the image above or click here to go to their website. On that page you can sign up for their free two week trial. They only need your email address and don’t ask for any payment info.

After the two week trial if you are happy with their service you can sign up for a paid account. Their packages range from $4.95 a month to some cheaper options if you’re happy to pay for a few months up front.

Once you’ve signed up for the Smart DNS free trial you can go to their home page and login to your account. On your “My Account” page you should see some ticks and red circles with lines through them. Now we need to change our DNS settings and once we’ve done this right we should see all 4 green ticks. Each device setup is slightly different so I won’t list them all here.

Go to the Smart DNS Proxy website and check out their “How To Setup” page. There you can choose your device and operating system from a list. They have brilliant step by step guides and their support desk is very responsive if you have any questions. I recommend making the DNS changes on your router rather than your device.

Smart DNS - Account - 4 green ticks

Once you’ve made the changes to your DNS settings it’s best to restart your router and device and then login to your Smart DNS Proxy account again. Make sure you see all 4 green ticks. If there’s a red circle in the “IP Activation” row simply click “ReActivate”.

With this step completed you will be able to access American Netflix and a bunch of other services that were blocked before. To get Spotify working we’re going to need to do something else.

Spotify South Africa – VPN

The cool thing with Smart DNS is their free VPN offering. Let’s set one up so that we can get Spotify working in South Africa. Head over to your “My Account” page on the Smart DNS website and click on the “VPN” link towards the top of the page. That will take you to a page that has links to the instructions for the VPN setup as well as the list of VPN addresses.

Click on the instructions link and follow the instructions that apply to your device or operating system. I recommend choosing the PPTP option. When you get to the step where you enter a VPN address just choose one of the United States server addresses from their list of VPN addresses.

Once you’ve set the VPN connection up connect to it to make sure it works. The password for the VPN is the same as the one you use to login to your Smart DNS account. Now we need to download the Spotify app. You can download the Spotify app here. Once you’ve downloaded the app you need to install it.

Make sure you have the VPN connected and now you can run the app and create your user account by clicking on the “Signup” link in the app.

Spotify South Africa

Once you sign up and login the Spotify app should be working. Now you can listen to all the awesome music they make available on their free account. If you signup for a paid Spotify account then you won’t hear any ads.

The free account is supported by ads though so after every couple of songs you’ll hear an annoyingly loud and obnoxious ad. Well that sucks. Let’s get rid of the ads.

How To Get Ad Free Spotify

Spotify use your location to serve targeted adverts. Depending on the US VPN server you chose you will get served different ads that are targeted for that region. But what if we weren’t in the United States anymore? Well, then none of the ads would be targeted for our location. I mean, they’re not going to serve up ads for a US based company to someone in South Africa are they?

But, didn’t we need to make it look like we were in the US for this to work? Lucky for us Spotify only seem to check our location when we sign in and then don’t bother to look again for the next 15 days.

Close the Spotify app and disconnect the VPN. Open the Spotify app again and sign in if it doesn’t remember your previous signin. Now the Spotify app will continue working but you shouldn’t be served any more ads. Every now and again you may hear a Spotify specific ad but these are very rare.

Spotify Error Message

Spotify Error Code 408 - Your country does not match the one set in your profile

At some point if your router resets and reassigns your device with a new IP address you may get an error message like the one in the picture above. It will say “Your country does not match the one set in your profile”.

To fix this simply connect to the VPN again, restart the app, sign in and then close the app again. Disconnect from the VPN and now you can start the app and listen to free Spotify without the ads again.

Spotify South Africa Launch Date?

When will Spotify launch in South Africa? Who knows? They said they would launch in 2014 and then didn’t. In 2017 there’s been talk of Spotify South Africa launching but to date we haven’t seen anything concrete. For now we’ll keep listening using this solution.

While the solution above takes a few minutes to setup, once you have it done you never have to touch it again. The great thing about using Smart DNS Proxy is that it makes it possible to access a bunch of other services that are blocked in South Africa.

If you signup for a Netflix South Africa account you can even Watch the American Netflix content with this service. With this solution there’s no need to even wait for Pandora South Africa to launch.

If you have any issues setting this up please use the “Support” link on the Smart DNS website. Let me know in the comments section if you have any trouble with the setup that they can’t help with.

If you liked this solution please use the buttons on the right to share this with your friends so that they can also listen to Spotify in South Africa.

 

Click Here To Grab Your Smart DNS Proxy Free 2 Week TrialSmart DNS - Spotif South Africa