Skip to main content


Starting this morning, I am unable to play any of my playlists (on Android and coming from Amazon Music).  When I try, it starts going through each song on the first album in the playlist and gives me a message that says "Unable to play song title] - the song is not encoded correctly."  If I search for and play the album directly it works just fine, but I cannot play it through the playlist.

 

Any idea why this would suddenly be happening for playlists that were working just fine yesterday?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Cheers,
Burt

You might try rebooting your phone and router. You can also try deleting and reinstalling the Sonos app.


Thanks GuitarSuperstar!  Those all sound like good ideas.  Will give it a try.


You might try rebooting your phone and router. You can also try deleting and reinstalling the Sonos app.

Okay, I rebooted phone and router.  I also deleted and reinstalled Sonos app.  I appreciate the suggestions, but unfortunately the problem is still happening.


Are these playlists created in the Sonos app? If you remove a song from the playlist and then replace it, are you able to play that song again?


Yes, these playlists were all created in the Sonos app.  I tested removing a song from a playlist and replacing it, and then I was indeed able to play that song just fine - if I play that playlist it gives the  encoding error message for each of the songs before that one and skips to the one I replaced and plays that one.

Also, most of my playlists have all Amazon Music albums/songs, but I have a playlist that contains a song that I uploaded to YouTube Music.  I just noticed with that playlist the same thing happens - it gives errors for all the Amazon Music songs then plays the YouTube Music song okay.

I should mention that I have a ton of playlists with a lot of stuff on each one, so recreating all my playlists is not a solution I’d be very happy with, but I guess if that’s the only option I can do it.


Unfortunately you might have to recreate the playlists. But you might be able to export the playlists too. Take a look at this thread:
 


Did you switch from Amazon to Amazon HD, or something similar? That will break your playlists, you will need to export / import them using a utility app that understands these things.

In future you should stick to music service playlists: not only do they not get confused when you switch flavors of service, but you can use them on any device.


Hello GuitarSuperstar and Controlav,

Thank you for this additional info.

From what I'm reading, there doesn't seem to be a (simple) way to export playlists on Android, which is what I have.  I'm currently working with Amazon, who says there appears to have been some sort of glitch with my account and they are trying to do a refresh to see if they can fix it.  Regardless, I will definitely stick to music service playlists in the future!

BTW, sorry for my slow response.  For some reason, I did not receive any notification of your latest responses.

Thanks again for your help.  Much appreciated!

Cheers,
Burt

 


I have the exact same issue. I have a ticket open with Sonos and Amazon. Per Amazon, all Unlimited subscribers were updated to HD back in March 2021 but all my Sonos Playlists containing Amazon songs worked until about a week ago. Now I get the same “song not encoded correctly” error and if I re-add a song then it works… but I have thousands of Amazon songs in Sonos Playlists so recreating all my playlists is not reasonable. I’m hopeful that a fix is coming but neither Sonos nor Amazon is willing to say that. They’ve both told me that I should create playlists in the  native application (i.e. within the Amazon app) and songs will never break but that seems odd to me. The whole point of the Sonos app is to be able to manage all my music services from one app. Also, that means that Amazon songs cannot be mixed with other music services. Why have Sonos Playlists if we’re being told not to use them? This is just another issue I’ve experienced (YouTube Music issues anyone?) that indicates that Sonos really needs to set higher standards for their service providers because ultimately the bad experiences from multiple service providers reflects on the Sonos product.