Music streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal etc. revolutionize on how to enjoying the music (although it sounds like a mitigation to overcome piracy that eventually killed the traditional physical media) and many people are using it. Although music streaming services provides a countless of music catalogs, however there's a catch - you can't enjoy region-locked albums or songs!
Region-locked tracks are pretty normal especially non-English songs like Japanese song (well, this one is pretty notorious). But, if you're sitting in one particular region and wanted to access the song/album from the region where you lived and then encounters several unplayable tracks that you might seems it as region-locked tracks but it really isn't region locked tracks.
Instead, you're now encountering LOCKED OUT TRACKS!
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| Example of one album which have locked out tracks |
The main cause of these locked out tracks are one particular thing - permission issues on streaming sites. Record labels often have their rights to modify and alter the music catalog and even screwing up you especially you're already paying music streaming subscription when it comes to locked out tracks or albums or even wiping out the catalog from music streaming sites. So, is there any way to overcome that thing?
If you're using Spotify or other streaming services that only provides music streaming only, there's nothing much you can do about it, these locked out tracks will stay locked out forever until they changed their mind. If you're using Apple Music. there's a great news for you - you can purchase the album to unlock these tracks!
If you're using Apple Music on iTunes program, simply click on the 3 dotted lines on the album you just saved into library and select show in iTunes Store. From there, you can purchase the full album to enjoy the locked out tracks.
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| Purchase the album to unlock the tracks. You can see these tracks are marked as "ALBUM ONLY" |
Subsequently, you can enjoy streaming these unlocked tracks on Apple Music on smartphone without having to import purchased album track files but it must be accessed from Library section only. If you're using other than Apple Music, look out for album purchase section where you can buy the full album to unlock these tracks. If not, these locked out tracks are remaining locked for a long time.
Hope this guide helps you...cheers...
