Following the App fiasco, has anyone tried using a VPN to successfully access radio stations outside of the UK with TuneIn??

I haven’t tried it, but most likely not. Most probably offer a trial or 1 month payment, so no harm trying.

Streaming providers, have known about the use of VPNs for years and play whack-a-mole with the major vpn providers by blocking their IP ranges.

They don’t even need to bother banning accounts, just wholesale block VPN provider IP ranges and keep taking the money works for them. It also lets them show they took appropriate steps if the copyright holders come after them.

It also depends what functional data they request from Sonos. If a streaming provider has geo-graphic based limitations, they may request location information, which may be more accurate than source IP addresses.

The likely, more successful route if it is purely source IP restricted and you have the technical know-how, is to run your own tiny VPN server with a hosting provider in a country that isn’t blocked. I used to do that when I was working in Europe and wanted to stream uk TV.

Having said that, at some companies I have worked at over the years, we would also block hosting provider IP ranges who showed up in our monitoring and cloud providers because no end user of our system had a valid reason to be connecting from a data centre. VPN’s meant trying to circumvent geo-restriction which could cause our clients to be fined, shut down within 24 hours or lose their license to operate.

It’s also likely not app related and that it is just a coincidence of timing with some of the providers getting around to adding UK geo-restriction.

Thanks for replying promptly.

I have absolutely no technical know how, and actually most of your reply is incomprehensible to me LOL

However, I suppose I will try the free trial option you suggested.

You would need a router-level VPN: a VPN that you install on your mobile device (or PC) is of zero use as its the speakers that call out to the music services. If you can run a VPN at the router level, configure that to be used by all of your Sonos devices.