What is Spotify?
Spotify is the head honcho of online music streaming services. This monster music library has over 20 million tracks streaming for free through a trendy interface that is compatible with all Android and iOS devices as well as computers. You can also share your favourite music with your friends on Facebook and keep up with what your friends are listening to. Similarly to iTunes, you can stay up to date with featured music and top tracks on Spotify. You can also create playlists, follow your favourite artists and listen to some of their favourite music, too. If you sign up for Spotify’s free service, you will be prompted by advertisements in between some songs. On the other hand, Spotify offers a premium service that is ad free and offers mobile listening, an offline mode and allows you to listen to your favourite music in any country if you’re travelling. You can evaluate Spotify’s premium service through a 30-day free trial. Spotify is based in the US, but it streams its service in over 20 different countries, including: Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Turkey, etc. Spotify’s premium service prices are subjected to international laws. This means that pricing differs from one country to another. For example, Spotify in Australia is subject to the country’s new Netflix tax (GST) and it costs 10% more than it costs in the US.
Recently, the Australian government has introduced a new tax bill, dubbed as the “Netflix Tax” or GST, on all digital goods, ebooks, apps as well as online TV and music streaming services. Even though Netflix doesn’t charge its Australian subscribers the GST tax, Spotify and other services do. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Australian users have turned to other ways to subscribe to their favourite online TV and music services without paying the 10% tax. Luckily, you can avoid GST and subscribe to Spotify in Australia completely tax free by using encryption protocol service providers, like: VPNs or SmartDNS proxies.
How to Get Spotify in Australia tax-free with VPN
You can easily avoid the Netflix tax and enjoy listening to your favourite music on Spotify in Australia by using a virtual private network, aka VPN. While Spotify in Australia can charge GST for your subscription to their premium service through your location which can be identified by their server via your IP address, you can still overcome this problem by subscribing through an entirely different IP address that belongs to a country in which Spotify doesn’t charge as much, like the US for instance. This is how a VPN basically operates. When you use a VPN, your real IP address is masked and replaced with another IP from a different country of your choice from your VPN provider’s list of servers so it would appear to Spotify in Australia that you’re logging into their website from another country, e.g. USA. In this way, you can avoid paying the 10% tax for your subscription to Spotify in Australia.
Moreover, a VPN doesn’t only change your IP address, but it also encrypts all of your data traffic and personal information, including your usernames, passwords and credit card information to protect your data from malicious cyber activities and conceal your online activity from your government’s monitoring systems and other third parties. In addition, you can bypass internet censorship in any country and overcome geo-restrictions by a VPN to get unlimited access to restricted web content and blocked services. This means that you can enjoy your favourite music on Spotify in Australia and in any other country in the world, even if the service isn’t available in that country. You get to enjoy bonus features when you use a VPN, such as: speeding up your internet connection, buffer-free streaming, performing secure financial transactions as well as anonymous web browsing. You can check out some of the best VPN services in the market today that are fairly cheap and offer a solid performance together with the latest hardcore encryption technique (e.g: OpenVPN over SSH and SSL) that can effortlessly slip through any filtering systems, including: The Great Firewall of China.
How to Get Spotify in Australia tax-free with SmartDNS
A faster way to get a premium service on Spotify in Australia without paying the Netflix tax is by using a fairly new encryption service in the world of cyber security known as SmartDNS proxy. Even though a SmartDNS lacks the suave encryption techniques used by VPNs, it is a lot faster and is used by many web surfers to bypass geo-restrictions and stream any content. SmartDNS proxies can alter your IP address enabling you to avoid GST on Spotify in Australia but they don’t provide any form of encryption. SmartDNS is also compatible with all devices and operating systems. There are over 20 popular SmartDNS providers in the market today, but Overlay is most notably for its top notch quality service and diverse features as it is mentioned on their website:
Using innovative technology, developed to complement OverPlay’s range of high-speed VPN servers, access to smartdns is included free of charge in all our subscription packages. Once enabled, you’ll never have to worry about enabling a VPN connection in order to access your favorite sites again, just access them as normal and smartdns will do the magic for you. Not only that, you’ll often find a healthy speed increase too – facebook photos load faster, stream in HD where previously it wasn’t possible, it all just works!
