Not only are Canadians charged more for just about everything (even though our dollar is higher than the greenback these days!), but we’re blocked from accessing popular streaming sites in the US such as Hulu, Spotify, Pandora and the much more impressive US Netflix catalog. Geo-blocking, god damn you.
Like many, I had eagerly anticipate the release of the popular music streaming service, Spotify, in North America. Once it was released, it of course ended up being US-only, and us Canadians got another kick in the nuts. I’ve been happily using Grooveshark, dabbled in rdio, but curiousity got the better of me and I wanted to check out Spotify. Here’s how I did it.
I used the same method to get access to US Netflix content from within Canada: VPN through HotSpotShield, which gets you an American IP address. (Note: The PC version I installed seems a little sketchy to me). If I did this over again I might do it all from within a throwaway Windows VM, because I’m paranoid. But not to worry, if you have an iPad or iPhone you don’t have to install any software – you can temporarily configure it as a VPN natively (see step 1). To me, this is a much better option than installing dodgy software, though not without it’s annoyances.
3. Plug in your beta invite code and create your Spotify account. Note: The iPad version of Hotspot Shield I was using seemed to timeout every 3-5 minutes. So after filling out the form (before I hit submit) I found it best to go back to Settings and toggle VPN on/off, then back into Safari and hit submit).
5. Disconnect from HotspotShield
7. Listen to whatever music you want (high quality, streaming)
An interesting result: You only need to mask your IP address for registration and to download the program. After that, you can stream music from the program without having to continue masking your IP.
I’ve had my 
Reader Kolonel2 to the rescue with a much-requested feature — A script that stops Transmission seeding once it’s seeded to 100%. Sharing is caring, people!
In an