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access denied when trying to play YouTube music

Hi all,

My first post and it's an odd one because I searched and found multiple instances of other people with the same issue going back years, all previous threads closed as answered but the answers don't apply to me as

1: I haven't just changed my app and

2: the updates mentioned as a fix in the other threads are also years old now.

 

So here is the issue;

I open the Sonos app( as usual), 

I click on the music note symbol at the bottom ( as usual),

I select YouTube music ( this is new, just added and confirmed, but I also tried removing and adding again but there is no issue adding the service with my YouTube account details, code generated, entered and linked seamlessly)

 

I see before me my liked songs and only one playlist, which in and of itself is odd.

 

I added a new song to the liked songs to test, and it does appear in the Sonos app under the YouTube music service/ liked songs... however…

I click on a song to play and it is greyed out, something that pops up in most of the previous threads about this issue, but , just to be sure I followed the previous accepted answer ( which related to a recent app upgrade which I haven't done, everything is already up to date), and none of that worked/ changed anything because Sonos refuses to play the grey songs, simply generating an error message saying

" access denied"

But it's not denied access to YouTube music, it is successfully linked to my YouTube account.

 

So, any ideas on what to try?

 

Steps I have taken…

Turn phone off & on.

Remove & add YouTube again and link YouTube service again.

Turn off & on router and turn off & on Sonos speakers, in various combinations.

 

The app will play from Spotify and Amazon with no problems.

 

The app plays audio books no problems.

The app will play Radio stations no problems.

There are some older tracks that are not available through my other music services, and some club remixes that I can only find on YouTube, so would very much like this to work, and I think it should, because the option to add YouTube music as a service is there.

 

My phone is all up to date, Google pixel  range on android 13, as I say works for everything but the YouTube music service through Sonos app.

 

I tried casting from YouTube music to the Sonos speakers but it cannot find them when I cast direct or try to pair from YouTube music ( I think it is only designed to cast to a computer/ tablet not speakers) but I thought I would try it that other way because I was getting nowhere doing it the Sonos way.

 

I would appreciate any ideas on how to get this feature actually working , as so far each and every song gets the same error message, and I tried newer songs too, just in case the songs were too old or random so picked a few recent pop tracks that I can play through Sonos/Spotify, but under Sonos/YouTube it is grey with the same error message " access denied"

 

Many thanks in advance for anyone willing to help,

 

M

 

 

17 replies

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Mrssomerset 

Sorry to hear of the troubles you’ve been having with YouTube Music.

My first thought was whether or not you are in a supported region. We have you down as being in the UK (which is supported) - is that correct?

Assuming it is, and because of the steps you’ve already tried, I would recommend you next try rebooting every device involved - the speaker(s), your phone and your WiFi router. For the router, please leave it switched off for at least 30 seconds, and reboot the speaker(s) and phone after WiFi has returned.

If this does not help, however, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who will gather diagnostics from your system and try using some test accounts for YouTube Music on your system to compare results.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
M

Thank you.

I spoke to a very knowledgeable and patient person at technical support who explained to me that different streaming services apply different restrictions on different third party services/ speakers, and that because I was using YouTube music and not YouTube music Premium, that the songs will not play on my Sonos speakers, I need to sign up for YouTube music premium to be able to play them on my Sonos speakers.

I also discussed another streaming service I was planning on trying and they had information for that service for me too ( tidal) and also had another recommendation for me , based on me waffling on about why I had tried YouTube music in the first place, which was really helpful.

So yes, if someone else is reading this with the same issue, before trying all the resets and unplugging etc, do check you have YouTube music premium and not just the free version.

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Mrssomerset 

Ah - thanks for updating the thread.

I did just find the following text:

Both Free and Premium subscription tiers of YouTube Music work on Sonos. When using YouTube Free accounts, you will only have access to your uploaded content, and not YouTube Music's catalogue.

With Spotify Free or Amazon Prime, they won’t let you play specific tracks, but they will play something. It seems YouTube Music have gone for a different tack and have decided to only operate as online storage for your uploaded tracks on the free tier instead.

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
V

There is definitely some bug here with Sonos App how it integrates with youtube premium account , Omg the entire community is facing this issue and no solution yet !!! . Check the screenshot. I have a Youtube premium account , Youtube music app allows to play the song . Same account on Sonos , greys out the song and says access denied .  I added just one song in a playlist to demonstrate this below 

 

YT Music app 

 

 

A

Just shortly got my youtube not working.

Is there a statement?

 

sonos one sl, never worked, did all the trobule shut tips nothings works.

same like above without premium. The lists pops up, its connected. But music? No.

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Appeltje123 

I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports, to get to the root of the problem.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
Z

I just had a related problem, connecting the Sonos old app to YouTube Music, it did authorize but the access to playing songs was denied.

 

I have an Youtube Premium account with two users inside it, the main one with same user as the account, with e-mail, and the second user, with only an user name and no e-mail, where this second user is the one I use to navigate and socialize inside YouTube.

 

The access denied problem happened because I was using this second sub account to connect to Sonos. To fix it, I removed all the Youtube Music accounts, and I created a new connection using the main account.

 

So if you have multiple sub accounts, perhaps even due to a Youtube Premium Family account(not my case, I just have a regular one), try connecting with the Sonos App using the main account, and not the sub accounts. It does suck because your personal playlists might be in your sub accounts, and you might not have access to them with the main account.

C

So, I'm wondering why this post has been deemed answered. I looked at the "answer" and it's definitely not a good one. 

I am a new user to Sonos. I added my YouTube premium sub account. I can see all my playlist besides my "liked" playlist. All songs in the playlists are grey and when you press play, you get an "access denied" box. 

 

Can someone from Sonos either confirm or deny that a subaccount can or cannot be used on the Sonos App ?!

T

The Sonos app is very buggy.  I was using YouTube Music last night.  Today I'm getting error messages and no ability to add back any music services.

Airgetlam

Did you contact the Sonos Technical Support team, as suggested by the Sonos rep above? What did they suggest?

Bruce
Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Mrssomerset et al

We’ve not had any further reports of this issue, and in our own testing, we are now unable to reproduce it - if you haven’t already, it may be a good time to test things on your own systems.

Please report back if you continue to see this issue. Thanks.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
M

Hi all,

So I received an update to my original post today so I mooched back to see what the latest was ..

9 months ago I started this thread because I saw I could add YouTube music, which I did, but all the songs were greyed out.

On advice from a kind reply, I contacted customer support and they advised that YouTube music has to be the premium version for it to work with Sonos, so I posted again, and decided to use a different service instead, because even though all my erstwhile "Google play music" tracks had moved to YouTube music , well mostly, some were lost in the Google -youtube reshuffle, but I couldn't play them on Sonos but I could on my nest speakers, so decided to leave the update and mooch off…

 

Then today, just out of interest, still without having a YouTube premium account, I saw that people were still having issues, I tried again, just to see, and now I can see some of the songs from YouTube.

They are only the ones from the Google play music to YouTube transfer so I suppose these count as " uploaded" tracks.

These are not greyed out and I can play them on Sonos now.

I still don't have access to anything else from YouTube via Sonos, but again I still don't have a YouTube premium account.

 

From what I have read above the rules seem to be:

 

1: to play anything you like from YouTube you need a YouTube premium account and must be linking the main premium account with Sonos and your playlists in YouTube must be in the main YouTube premium account for you to see/ play them.

 

2: a YouTube premium sub account doesn't work.

 

3: if you upload music to YouTube, either directly or through a merge like when Google play music merged to become YouTube music , then you can see it and play it with that YouTube account linked to Sonos even if it isn't a premium account, but only that content.

 

I am not a tekky, so please read the threads yourselves in case I have misread anything, but that is my take away from this and that the 3 points above are a YouTube driven set of rules and not a Sonos set of rules.

I do recommend speaking to their support people, I found them very patient and knowledgeable, especially with an old bat like me.

 

 

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Mrssomerset 

2: a YouTube premium sub account doesn't work.

In our own testing, this seems to no longer be an issue.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
I

Has anyone managed to resolve this yet?

I’m having the exact same issue.

 

Linked my YouTube Premium family account to Sonos using the main account (admin account).

Everything is greyed out and denied access. Spotify and Amazon Music work fine. How can this not be fixed yet?

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @I_Yush 

As we now consider this issue to be resolved, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
I

Thanks i’ll get in touch with them.

C

This has been an ongoing issue forever, and the new app is even worse, there is no results for youtube music when searching either, only playlist, and support is of no help, they run you around (remove and re-add integration, unintall app and reinstall, etc...) for a few hours hoping it fixes isltself.

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