Soundcloud problem - Unable to play - Song not encoded correctly

located East Coast US….I have a mix of old Sonos products (15+ years old, still going strong) [can only use S1 app which I prefer] and a few newer Sonos products for TV surround sound [Beam, Arc, Sub, requires using new S2 app but refuse to since still hopeless waste of an app]. 

Similar to other folks here, end of Aug/ early Sept-2025 experienced the dreaded “Song not encoded correctly” issue only when playing music from SoundCloud [which is 99.9% time], all other services work [Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, etc.].  Tried all the rebooting, remove / reauthorize SoundClound but no help.  Later in Sep-2025, SC started working again.  But alas fleeting, now have the same error message again [end of Oct-2025].  Assume from recent posts, folks are now experiencing same issue again.  Will try to reach out to Sonos FWIW… [just venting, wish I had a viable solution to offer folks]   

I suspect, as the other Sonos options are all working, it is an issue with SoundCloud. Have you contacted them?

I’d be interested in what Sonos Support says, as well. 

Same issue here in Australia. I see this has been going on for a month so far. Any news on a fix? 
 

Andy

Thank you guys! Reauthorizing my SoundCloud account fixed it

I raised a ticket with Soundcloud but have heard nothing.

Sonos support were next to useless insisting I restart, reauthorise, reboot my router which made no difference.  They then wanted to me to call them so I could go through “more in depth” troubleshooting. Sod that. I explained the problem and reminded them it also happened a month ago and was resolved outside of anything I did.

Useless support. First wade through AI prompts to get to chat with someone who then went through a script of do this, do that which got nowhere slowly.

I'm just as frustrated as everyone else with both vendors involved. Neither seems willing to take the bull by the horns and resolve this issue. I say "seems" because it's possible one or both are working behind the scenes — a month ago we experienced a similar problem, and it mysteriously resolved itself. Highly unlikely it was spontaneous; someone must have intervened.

But without clear communication from either vendor, we users are left in the dark. We don't know what's being done, who's responsible, or what to expect.

Personally, I suspect this is more of a SoundCloud issue than a Sonos one. But again, due to the lack of transparency, we may never know for sure. And without that clarity, I doubt we'll ever see a proper fix — in the true IT sense of the word.

Have a Nice Day

Indeed.

Weirdly I (now) have some tracks that can play. Older ones but not all.

I did some checking and testing of Sample Rate/bits etc and couldn’t find a pattern of ones that worked or didn’t.  Worse still, I converted one that didn’t work to a ‘working’ format and uploaded it.  It worked. Once!  And now it says it’s not encoded properly.

I do wonder too if the ‘encoded’ error message is a red herring and a defaulting message when something goes wrong. As Steve says we won’t know.  Someone at either company must as this is not the first time it has happened.

UPDATE.  Just listening to a playlist/album.  Track 1 works, track 2 error, track 3 works.  All have the same encoding!

I had the same issue with the S2 version of the app.  My wife and I both had Soundcloud accounts, so there are 2 added to the Sonos app.

Fixed it by completely removing the Soundcloud accounts from the Sonos App and then re-adding them.  Took all of about 5 mins.

have done that about 10times already albeit on the S1 apps

Same problem here (UAE). Soundcloud files that were playing fine a few weeks ago, all of a sudden are ‘encoded incorrectly’, while other files from the SAME playlist still work fine! 

I’ve updated all software (if not already the latest), rebooted wifi server and all rebooted speakers, re-connected them to a different Wifi, removed and re-installed SoundCloud account. Nothing helps. Still the same error… 

Anyone had any success with anything I haven’t tried yet?

Thanks

Same here in Australia except it is Soundcloud and Apple Music tracks that won’t play.. 

Alright, it works again! All plays well here. While I was in a chat with Sonos help. Not sure if that did the trick. All good now.

Still not working in Oslo, neither after reauthorize or reauthorize and add new track.. the most annyoing part is that this is the 4 time this years the service is broken in similar way…. ​@SONOS do you read theese?

As far as I’m aware, the only Sonos presence in these forums are moderators. My guess is they usually summarize data, and pass it on to someone for appropriate dissemination. I don’t think any of the code staff, or project managers read this data. 

This is the way forums have worked in my own past. Not unusual, IMHO. 

After talking to support and told them that reauthorize worked the first day but not the days after.. i was told to reauthorized since that worked… go figure.. so much for help.. still same problem. ​@SONOS 

It’s rather obvious they’re just working from a script rather than doing any real investigation.  I do have tracks that work, from a year ago but nothing since that time and they were all working fine a week ago.

I’m reluctant to phone support as I can only imagine how painful that will be.

I succumbed.  Phone support more useful than the AI bot or the chat side of things.

He said that there is a known problem and that it is being investigated but does not have an ETA for when it will be fixed.

Reauthorizing my account and a force quit of the iOS app and resetting the queue did the trick for me. 
 

What helpful error messages!

That worked for me too. The piece I didn’t do before was resetting the queue on all my devices.

Not sure if that is the trick to this, but I reauthorized, forced quit, reset all queues, forced quit again (why not!!) and it’s working. Just reauthorizing my SC account yesterday, didn’t work.

bingo!
THANKS for this, worked for me too. 5 different devices.10’ in, all good so far 🤞

back and working for me from last night.  No reauthorisation required, it was fixed somewhere.