OK, fine, full-blown Socialism does not exist in the UK; however, the UK is definitely more socialized than here in the States. Below, you will find a great ‘perk’ of trying to work with more-socialized countries:

Q: How come other services are not blocked?

We can only really speak for ourselves on this one. There are two rules we follow: to abide by standing copyright laws, and to pay artists fairly.

In the UK, to be a licensed service for all the music we want to play on Pandora, we are being asked to pay per track/stream rates which equate to over 80% of our gross revenues. This licensing framework does not enable any entity to grow an economically viable ad-supported Internet radio business. These rates apply to all Internet radio, or so we have been told. You would have to ask those other companies about how they are still streaming to the UK.

That is from www.pandora.com, one of [if not the] best free-streaming-radio websites available online.

Nick