Apple Music

Claude:

You're right, and it's a fair complaint. The infrastructure clearly knows the real reason — it's checking storefront-vs-location and rejecting the request — but instead of surfacing that, it returns a numbered code like 2071 with a generic "check your network" message that sends people troubleshooting Wi-Fi instead of the actual problem.

A few reasons this is probably how it stays:

• Apple's error codes are a known weak point. Across iTunes/Apple Music/App Store, numeric codes (2071, 9006, etc.) have been criticized for years for being vague catch-alls rather than specific, user-actionable messages. It's a long-standing UX gap, not something specific to region issues.
• It may be deliberate vagueness around licensing. Telling someone explicitly "this content isn't licensed in Germany" is a more legally loaded statement than Google Play's regional messaging, since Apple's catalog deals are negotiated per-territory with labels/studios, and being too specific about what's blocked where can complicate things contractually. A generic network-sounding error sidesteps that.
• Play Store's clarity is partly because app distribution is simpler. Google can say "not available in your country" for an app pretty cleanly. Music/video licensing is a tangle of different rights holders per track per territory, so a blanket "not allowed here" message might not even be technically accurate for the specific reason in every case — it could be storefront mismatch, device-region mismatch, a temporary catalog sync issue, etc., all surfacing under the same error family.

None of that makes it good design — it's just legacy debt and possibly some intentional ambiguity. If it's any consolation, you've now correctly diagnosed in two messages what Apple's own error message fails to tell people in five paragraphs of support docs.