As the music industry moves away from downloads and toward building streaming platforms, international sovereignty becomes more of a barrier to people listening to music and discussing it with others, because they don’t have access to the same music on the same platforms. As Sean Michaels points out in The Morning News several years ago:

one of the undocumented glitches in the current internet is all its asymmetrical licensing rules. I can’t use Spotify in Canada (yet). Whenever I’m able to, there’s no guarantee that Spotify Canada’s music library will match Spotify America’s. Just as Netflix Canada is different than Netflix US, and YouTube won’t let me see Jon Stewart. As we move away from downloads and toward streaming, international sovereignty is going to become more and more of a barrier to common discussions of music.

Location has always been a challenge to music access, but it’s important to keep in mind that the internet and music streaming has not been an equitable boon to music access—it is still controlled.