Music rights are a bit of a mess across the Atlantic. PRS/PPL licences don't reciprocate with the American equivalents and vice versa. Either it's two sets of licences (and possibly legal entities) or you end up geo blocking. Though on the up side you can stream to parts of Europe and even Australia from the UK IIRC.
Licencing bodies are also fairly actively monitoring these things. I've had them try to chase me for royalties for services that have been shut down because they're still listed in public directories.
Came here to say that! It's a nice app and very innovative, but if I have fire up a f*** VPN every time I want to listen to stations outside the UK, forget it!
I don't think the developers care either: I've emailed numerous times without an answer, and even less-than-favourable reviews on the App Store failed to elicit a response. At least tell us the reason for the UK- hatred if you're not going to fix it?!
“unfortunately the restriction must be extended for an indefinite period due to copyright and neighbouring rights related matters that require clarification. ”
“Our original configuration was fully HTTPS-enabled; however, we had to adjust this when browser manufacturers started blocking HTTPS websites from loading HTTP streams.
Approximately 20% of the stations featured on Radio Garden are accessible via HTTP streams, which would become inaccessible if we switched entirely to HTTPS. Given the recent changes in Chrome's behavior towards forcing an HTTPS connection, we are considering moving back to an all-HTTPS setup in the near future.”
