SoundCloud has banned VPN access

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

User impact and reactions

  • Long‑time paying users report suddenly getting 403s and say they’ll cancel if it continues.
  • Some explicitly say this pushes them back to piracy or local downloads, arguing streaming had nearly killed piracy until platforms became more hostile.
  • A few describe SoundCloud more broadly as degraded (spam, bots, poor support, shadowbans) and see this as the last straw.

How broad is the block?

  • Multiple commenters note that some VPN endpoints still work; changing locations/providers can restore access.
  • Others see blocks mainly on data‑center/VPS IPs (Linode, EC2, etc.) and suspect SoundCloud is using AWS CloudFront/WAF or commercial VPN/proxy lists.
  • Tailscale‑style “VPN to your own home” and other residential exits generally aren’t affected.

Technical approaches to VPN blocking

  • Discussion of GEOIP/VPN databases, ASN and hosting‑range blocking, and “shoot first” practices that catch many legitimate IPs.
  • Comments describe enumerating commercial VPN exit nodes by mass‑subscribing to VPNs and scanning for VPN handshakes; IPv6 is seen as manageable by blocking larger prefixes.
  • Some mention MTU‑based detection, residential vs hosting IP heuristics, and blocking entire hosting providers via their published IP ranges.

Motivations speculated

  • Country‑level licensing and geoblocking for music are seen as a likely driver.
  • Others point to legislation (age/identity verification, local content rules) and abuse prevention (spam, credential stuffing, hostile scraping).
  • AI dataset protection is raised: blocking non‑residential IPs to make scraping harder and preserve the value of their catalog.

Arms race and collateral damage

  • Several note that even governments struggle to fully block VPNs; SoundCloud will hurt real users more than determined bots or scrapers.
  • Residential proxy networks and “free VPN” / mobile SDK botnets mean ordinary users can be blocked without realizing they were part of a proxy network.
  • Some argue broad IP/ASN blocking is now the only practical way to cut abuse, even though it harms privacy‑minded users.

Broader web and privacy themes

  • Many see SoundCloud as part of a wider trend: Reddit, YouTube, Patreon, some news and streaming sites also blocking VPNs or forcing logins.
  • There’s debate over whether this is “active hostility” or just amoral optimization around tracking, ads, and licenses.
  • Philosophical split: some say pervasive tracking is inevitable and not worth worrying about; others argue normalization of surveillance has serious long‑term risks.

Alternative tools and responses

  • Users discuss routing through friends/home via Tailscale or similar, Apple’s Private Relay (limited to Safari), Cloudflare Warp, and self‑hosted tunnels.
  • Others suggest just leaving SoundCloud, downloading content (e.g., via scdl‑like tools), or moving to piracy and local libraries.

Reported security incident

  • Late in the thread someone links a report that SoundCloud recently suffered a breach and, in response, applied configuration changes that disrupted VPN access.
  • According to that report, SoundCloud has not yet given a timeline for restoring full VPN compatibility; whether the current blocking is temporary or a permanent policy remains unclear.