Hi,

I'm from Europe, and my account is also European (share a family account with my parents and some cousins), but I moved to Japan a couple of months ago for work for a while. Spotify worked marvellously for months, until suddenly, since yesterday, some artists started showing up with Japanese characters, which makes it very hard to scrobble (I use last.fm a lot, and the direct connection to last.fm was one of the reasons I got a Premium subscription to Spotify) and it kind of ruins the concept of maintaining music charts.

For example:

David Bowie >> デビッド・ボウイ
Sigur Rós >> シガー・ロス

Funny thing is, at the top of the artist page, it still shows the normal name. I don't have access to any Japan exclusive music, which is fine, as my account is European, so I don't know why I am getting this side effect? A coworker, also from Europe, does not have this problem (at least for now).

Is there any way around this?

As a side thought:

I do not understand this choice of changing the names to Japanese for the Japanese market anyway. One of my Japanese coworkers was annoyed by it as well (he also uses last.fm). It is also a weird decision because of the connection to that service. If a band has a name with Roman characters, don't change it to Japanese characters... same the other way around, if the artist is Japanese, don't romanize the name, it should always display the original.