Soundcloud problem - Unable to play - Song not encoded correctly

Would this be the issue?

Perhaps you are onto something, newly added tracks to que seems to be working . Thanks!

(I tried tracks already in the current list. (which is saved in a sonos component) )

Songs from feed, search results and liked all not playing. 

What did Sonos Support say, when you called in to discuss it? Did you speak to the ‘bot, or a human?

When you speak directly to the Support staff, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

From another thread that I am unable to find now, the solution is to delete tracks fro your playlist and re add them. This is because SoundCloud did some work on the back end on Match 11th. 

Found the thread 

your saved SoundCloud tracks are suddenly refusing to play, you aren’t alone! Here is a quick heads-up on what’s going on and how to easily fix it.

The Issue
SoundCloud rolled out some backend system updates on Wednesday, March 11th. Because of these changes, any SoundCloud tracks you saved to your Sonos Playlists or Sonos Favorites before that update are now pointing to broken, outdated links.

If you are running into this, you’ll likely see generic error messages in the Sonos app, such as:

• “Could not play [name of song]. Try again.”
• “Failed to play content. Try again.”

The Fix
The good news is that your music isn’t gone; you just need to refresh the links. Here is the workaround:

• Delete the affected track(s) or playlist from your Sonos Favorites or Sonos Playlist.
• Search for the content again in the Sonos app.
• Re-add it to your favorites or playlist.

It is a bit of a manual process to recreate them, but doing this will update the links and get your music streaming smoothly again

Thanks- this worked.

I’m seeing the same issue and wanted to add another data point.

Both of my systems are affected:

• Home system: Sonos S2 (fully updated)
• Office system: Sonos S1

In both locations SoundCloud playback fails with errors like “song not encoded correctly” or “failed to play content.”

Things I tested:

• Playing tracks saved in Sonos favorites → fails
• Searching for a brand new track in SoundCloud from the Sonos app → also fails
• Removing and re-searching tracks does not fix it
• Both systems are on different networks and locations

Because the issue is happening on both S1 and S2 and even with newly searched tracks, it does not appear to be the old playlist link issue mentioned earlier in the thread.

SoundCloud tracks play normally in the SoundCloud app itself.

This looks more like a Sonos ↔ SoundCloud integration or stream encoding issue rather than outdated saved links.

Adding this report in case it helps Sonos confirm the scope of the problem.

Interesting. Seems like a separate issue that your system is experiencing. What did Sonos Support say, when you called in with this issue?

As of today March 20 I'm experiencing this problem again 

I tried restarting, clearing queue and updating. 

I had this issue for a couple of weeks now and today I got it fixed by:
 

• Add 2FA to my soundcloud account
• Completely removing the soundcloud account from my sonos S2 app
• Adding my account with 2FA and device code

Just reauthorizing and rebooting the sonos app did not help me.
Cheers!

Having same issues. SoundCloud throws encoding error and I can't play anything.

Then what did Sonos Support say, when you called in to discuss it?

I've tried to play it from the soundcloud app from my phone to the Sonos. That worked. Looks like a workaround for me right now. 

I don't use it so often I can't do with out, but I van imagine it's a pain that it's not working correct. 

Hopefully it's a little help.

Regards.

Just to add my two pence to this 

I’m using SoundCloud (free tier) with Sonos S2 app and noticed something odd. Most tracks play fine, but anything Soundcloud related I have added to a Sonos playlist stopped working and gave me the Its encoded correctly error. Reauthorising SoundCloud, removing/re‑adding the service, updating App etc. didn’t help. The same tracks still exist and play in the SoundCloud app, and if I search for them on Sonos they work — but the playlist entries were dead.

The only fix was to delete the old entries and re-add them.

Does anyone know why Sonos loses the ability to play older SoundCloud playlist items? Is this a known metadata/URL refresh issue between SoundCloud and Sonos?

I did ask copilot and it came up with this and I quote

“Why this happens (the real cause)

This issue is surprisingly common with SoundCloud on Sonos, especially for free accounts.

The underlying reasons:

• SoundCloud frequently rotates or updates track IDs/stream URLs Free-tier tracks often use temporary or region‑dependent URLs. When SoundCloud updates them, the old playlist entries stored in Sonos become invalid.

• Sonos stores a static reference to the track When you add a SoundCloud track to a Sonos playlist, Sonos saves the exact metadata it received at that moment. If SoundCloud later changes:

  • the track’s internal ID

  • the streaming endpoint

  • the availability region

  • the authentication token …then the Sonos playlist entry becomes stale.

• Searching works because it fetches fresh metadata When you search for the same track, Sonos queries SoundCloud in real time and gets the updated link — so it plays fine.

• Reauthorising doesn’t fix stale playlist entries Authentication only refreshes your account access, not the cached track metadata.

This is why removing and re-adding the tracks fixes it — you’re forcing Sonos to store the new SoundCloud metadata”

Maybe the knowledge that AI has is right, it certainly fixed by readding the songs again, a right ballache!

I think that this is correct. In simple terms re adding the source fixes the issue. I agree an utter pain in the proverbial. 

Why this happens seem to be a mystery,  as I have used SoundCloud with Sonos for years, and this has only happened over the past few months. 
 

Maybe Soundcloud changed its behavior.

So this happens when you use Sonos playlists with Soundcloud? I am not a Soundcloud user, but would it not be possible to use Soundcloud playlists?

I’m seeing this issue now too, and it does not appear to be limited to old Sonos playlist entries.

Every song in my SoundCloud “Liked” list fails to play through Sonos. Sonos gives the “song not encoded correctly” error, skips to the next song, gives the same error again, loops through multiple tracks, and then eventually stops.

I’ve tried different liked songs and they all appear to fail the same way. The issue seems specific to SoundCloud playback through Sonos, especially the SoundCloud liked list.

I contacted Sonos chat support. They remotely rebooted my Sonos system, but that did not fix the SoundCloud problem. The only thing it changed is that my Mac Sonos app is now having connection problems and is complaining about a firewall issue, even though I do not appear to have a firewall blocking it.

So at this point, rebooting the Sonos system does not seem to be a fix. This looks more like a Sonos/SoundCloud integration problem than a local network issue, especially since multiple people in this thread are reporting SoundCloud encoding errors.

The only thing it changed is that my Mac Sonos app is now having connection problems and is complaining about a firewall issue, even though I do not appear to have a firewall blocking it.

This may (or may not) help with the Sonos app problem on your Mac. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network and toggle Sonos off and back on again.