YouTube Music skipping tracks due to song not being encoded properly

It’s usually a network error, rather than an encoding one… Could be a duplicate IP address.  Have you tried doing a full shutdown/restart in the recommended manner?

Hi, I searched previously and saw network was often blamed, more specifically packet loss.  I am network engineer by trade however, definitely no dup IPs, and packet loss is not seen either.  I experience this issue on both my Sonos, one is wifi, the other is rj45, so I am struggling to believe its network related.  I will try the restart however and report back!

Restart didn’t work, the song sometimes plays 2/3 seconds, other times 10 seconds, then says not encoded properly.

As you appear to have one device wired, it’s important that the speaker is connected direct to your main router (or unmanaged switch directly off it),  rather than say having it wired to an access point or WiFi mesh hub etc.. I would just ensure that is the case.

Any wifi access points/hubs need to be operating on the same WiFi channel as the main router. Ensure that the 5ghz and 2.4ghz bands are separately named too. 

The Sonos system in this situation will be running on SonosNet rather than your WiFi, (About my Sonos System will show devices as WM:0) so also check you have then put the following two things in place.…

1. Set the SonosNet channel in “Settings/System/Network” of the Sonos App so that it is at least 5 channels away from your router 2.4ghz channel.
2. Remove/reset the WiFi credentials in the Sonos App “SettingsSystem/Network/Wireless Setup”. These are not needed when running the devices on SonosNet.

There are other things you can do to improve network stability, but let’s leave it there for now and 'perhaps' try the above (if relevant to your situation), to see if it (hopefully) resolves your issue. 👍

Thank you that definitely gives me some points to look at.

My wired speaker is actually connected to an AP, not the default gateway, however the AP is still connected physically to the DG, so in principle its as you said, an unmanaged switch hanging off the main router.

I have 3 APs in the house, all 3 are on different channels, so again that seems to be an issue with what you’ve said.

As a quick test, I’ve just shutdown 2 APs and left the main router running.  The most problematic song that only ever gets at most 10s in, this time got to 30s before skipping.  Playing it again it’s back to around 10s. 

I am defintely going to play around some more with the network settings, shutdown all other APs and reset the system, see where that takes me. 

Thanks again Ken!

If you are able to (even as a temporary measure) wire a single Sonos device direct to the main router/hub that is the gateway and broadcasting the local 2.4ghz WiFi subnet, that would be best. I assume the only thing after that device might be an ISP provided router in 'bridge' or 'modem' mode with its WiFi switched off. However an unmanaged switch is also fine between the main LAN Hub and the chosen Sonos device … also separate out these wireless devices by approx. 2-3 feet to prevent interference betwee them and then do the other things mentioned in my earlier post.

Unfortunately I’ve had no joy with this.  I’ve wired in the speaker to my router, disabled all wifi, and still getting similar issues.  I never used to have any problem, but over the past few weeks its gotten progressively worse.  It only seems to affect YouTube Music on Sonos.  YouTube Music on any other device is fine, and any other music source on Sonos is fine.  Any other ideas?  It would be helpful Sonos, if the error were accurate.  It is complaining that the audio file is not encoded properly, however if its infact network related, the error message should say so.

I am getting a little further with this now since I’ve had the morning to investigate a bit more.  It seems that the issue is that I have a Sonos upstairs, that is wired to a switch running to my router downstairs.  The Sonos downstairs is on wifi.

I believe what is happening is that the downstairs Sonos is trying to connect via SonosNET to the upstairs, when in fact I want it to just use my own wifi and SonosNET should not be running anywhere.

I am finding it almost impossible to create this scenario however, since when I try and connect to WIFI from settings>network, I get password incorrect, which it is not.  I have seen other threads regarding this, but no surefire solution.  I seem to be going in circles atm resetting one device after another, but I am never seeing the downstairs sonos connect via my home wifi,

Firstly, I would not recommend you reset your devices in this situation as that really only needs to be done as a very last resort and it will not resolve what you are trying to achieve here. ALL Sonos devices will, in most situations, switchover to SonosNet whenever one device is wired to the LAN and in that situation I would recommend you remove the WiFi credentials from the Sonos App.

If you wish to run all devices on your WiFi, then you must uncable ALL your speakers from the LAN.. and (obviously) keep the WiFi credentials, or restore them, in “Settings/System/Network/Wireless Setup”… its best to have one, or the other, type of setup, rather than both, which is often referred to here as 'mixed mode’ ...and mixed mode only occurs automatically, when one signal is unavailable, or out of reach… in your case, it sounds like that is unlikely to happen.

I would recommend you keep all on SonosNet, but ideally you need to put the wired Sonos device direct into the main router, rather than the upstairs switch… if that’s not practicable, then you maybe best to switch to WiFi and enter the credentials as I have described for your routers 2.4ghz band (case sensitive) SSID/password.

Hi Ken,

I spent quite a long time investigating this this morning, also with Sonos over the phone.  In the first instance the wifi device was not connecting to the closest AP, so that was defintely making things worse.  That is now resolved, but still 1/5 songs or so skip with this error, but only on YouTube Music.  I’ve tried just about everything now, removed all APs, wired in the sonos, removed one sonos etc, and still some songs skip, so i think this has got to come down to YT Music on some songs.  Network was defintely compounding the issue however, the secondary AP though close, was not the best.

If you want to use your access points or mesh hubs, then you can, but ensure they are all using the same SSID/Password as your main router’s 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands (if using both) and more importantly ensure they are also operating on the same WiFi channels as the main router too… in some instances some access points apps either have the channel set to 'auto-select' or you may have to go via a web interface to change the access point channel.. but ensure you fix them.

Same advice with the router too, it’s important to not allow them to auto-select channels on startup or reboot etc.

The only system that appears to not allow this fixing of channels I’m aware of is Google Nest hubs but most other hub devices and access devices are okay.

If you opt to run your devices on SonosNet (as recommended) I would suggest you ensure you use a non-overlapping wifi channel on your router and access points.. so either channels 1, 6 or 11 and make sure you set the SonosNet channel at least 5 channels away from your chosen router channel.

So if the router is set to channel 6 by you, then set the SonosNet channel to either 1 or 11.

Hope that sorts your issues.

Hi @rbrown, are you able to try using AirPlay to send the audio to your Sonos speaker instead of using the Sonos app? If so, can you test that out for a bit and let us know if you get this encoding error still or something different?

There’s an issue affecting some people that the team is working on with YouTube Music that affects certain countries. The diagnostic looks ok on the network side, and the Beam is wired, so that shouldn’t be too much of a concern.

Hi Ryan,

I don’t have an Apple device unfortunately, however I think I can borrow one to do some testing.  Its fairly repeatable so I shouldn’t need much testing.  Just FYI, I am in Spain, in case that is one of the affected countries?

Spain isn’t on the short list yet, but that just means we haven’t had someone in Spain with the issue contact the team so far. So you may be the first to add it to the list. I’ll pass that along so they can look into it.

Hi @Ryan S 

I finally got around to testing this, when AirPlaying youtube from MacOSX it does not fail on any songs that I could find.

There is one song that always fails very quickly, usually within 5 seconds, and it played without any problem so I guess AirPlay works fine.

Does this help in any way with my issue, or does that result exclude me from on the issue you’re working on with YT?

Those are the results I expected, @rbrown. It looks like you’re running into that issue I mentioned above. We’re working on it with YouTube Music, but due to it, some songs give an encoding error when you try to play them on Sonos. AirPlay has the stream accessed by the mobile device, not the Sonos device, and can play those songs correctly. I’ll let you know when there’s an update to the issue.

Ah thats really good to hear thank you!

I can report having the same issue with YouTube Music. Any update on this?

I also have the same issue.  Very eager for any updates or recommendations for how to escalate this.   Since Google is inexplicably sunsetting Google Play Music and forcing us over to the inferior YouTube Music service it would be great if it functioned.
It's heartening that others share the issue though - increase odds of a solution at some point.

Just want to add I'm having the same issue with YouTube Music. My other music services over Sonos work perfectly.  Btw I'm in Argentina.

YouTube must still be working on the issue, as there is been no update from Ryan. 

@Ryan S is there any update at all?  Any ETA for a fix?  A bug tracker open on google side we could be pointed to?  It’s really killing my experience at the moment because YouTube Music is my only paid music source I have, and 1 in 3 songs skips.

There’s still no timeline for the fix, but I’ll check in with the team.

+1 on this.  I have been dealing with this for over a month now.  Extremely frustrating when songs skip - completely kills the experience.  

Would appreciate a speedy resolution SONOS

+1, been over a month now. Every song stops around 1/3... I even use Spotify free now in the meantime..