Since the 15.2 release there is quite a few songs that display this error when trying to play them. These seem to be mainly songs that are not lossless. They were purchased over time from Apple Music. They will still play if I use the Apple Music app, but they will no longer play from Sonos app. I suspect some lossy codex broke with latest release. Occurs with all my Sonos products.
Is this a known issue?
Taking my Play:3 out of retirement resolved the issue of Apple Music and playlists getting error messages and not playing. I now start everything I play from Apple Music on my Play:3 (hardwired to my router) then group in other speakers.
This should be a priority for Sonos to resolve on newer speakers.
What makes little sense is that you can delete a song that won't play and then re-download the same song from the same album/source and it will then play just fine. I've noticed that most of not all of the songs I have issues with are my older downloads. Anything I've downloaded over the last few months or anything that came off a CD I own (even if I added that CD long ago) seem just fine.
I am just slowly going through my library and deleting and re-adding the stuff that doesn't play. It is an annoying process, but I am also finding stuff I never listen to and just permanently deleting it lol.
I continue to get this error on Apple Music and YouTube Music.
it happens on single speakers, paired speakers and multi speaker TV setups.
it happens on all 15 of my speakers.
it is ongoing for a couple months with no fix happening.
Same problem here, using Apple Music and version 15.3.
I am using IKEA shortcut buttons for play lists around the house and this no longer works.
To begin with, I thought it was the IKEA hub playing up but when I run the Sonos app, I can see the playlist being cycled though the songs and constantly flagging “wrong encoding”.
To begin with it would cut songs short and skip to the next, but now it is about 90% of the songs in a playlist.
very very frustrating.
was gonna buy 2 x new move - but this problem is driving me mad - seems if its an existing sonos playlist (large one) and even when started from non airplay sonos - skips ‘encode’ incorrectly’ tracks - so re do yr entire playlists then? ffs - this is really not good
The way to push is by calling customer service, because these guys from Sonos might not be checking this forum.
yawn this is getting really embarrassing - please sonos get this issue sorted been months and months now
I am having the same issue. Random songs or batches of songs here and there in my VERY extensive Apple Music library. I cannot go through the entire library and delete and reload these songs. It’s simply too much work.
You know where I don’t have a problem is playing music on my HomePod… so strange that Apple is the problem.
The HomePod linked to your AppleID is not a 3rd Party device - it would play your Apple DRM protected tracks anyway, if indeed that is the issue that’s causing these error messages.
I’m not convinced that this is just due to the DRM problem. I have music that has played fine for months that now recently won’t play and gives the same ‘not encoded properly’ error. Very frustrating.
Got it. But if I delete the song from my library, aren’t I deleting the fact that I ever owned it and ripped it and then downloading it back down through the streaming subscription and thus don’t own it if I ever cancel that?
If you perhaps try it in iTunes Music with just one track only to begin with, you will see that you are removing the local copy and then replacing it with a DRM-free copy from the iCloud servers. Simply backup your local copy, if you are concerned.
Once you have tested the process with one track, you can go into delete all those tracks you have held in the iCloud as perhaps one huge batch and similarly remove/download the tracks in one fell swoop.
I recall doing this task some years ago, it was a case of leaving the PC running overnight etc. until all tracks had been replaced. Just to say I used an iTunes Match annual subscription - that was required all those years ago. See link: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204146
I’m not too sure what the current position is these days, I suspect that add-on annual subscription is no longer needed🤔? …I haven’t used iTunes Match for a good many years.
Hope that assists.
I've been having this issue for the last 2-3 weeks. I use YouTube music (either from my Android phone or Google home assistant). So the problem doesn't seem to be with Apple/iOS...
I ‘think’ there are perhaps also other reasons why the same error message shows aswell, such as occasions when the playing audio buffer empties and the device skips to the next track. So maybe try a different WiFi/SonosNet channel (depending on what your speaker is using) and see if that maybe resolves the issue.
Got it. But if I delete the song from my library, aren’t I deleting the fact that I ever owned it and ripped it and then downloading it back down through the streaming subscription and thus don’t own it if I ever cancel that?
If you perhaps try it in iTunes Music with just one track only to begin with, you will see that you are removing the local copy and then replacing it with a DRM-free copy from the iCloud servers. Simply backup your local copy, if you are concerned.
Once you have tested the process with one track, you can go into delete all those tracks you have held in the iCloud as perhaps one huge batch and similarly remove/download the tracks in one fell swoop.
I recall doing this task some years ago, it was a case of leaving the PC running overnight etc. until all tracks had been replaced. Just to say I used an iTunes Match annual subscription - that was required all those years ago. See link: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204146
I’m not too sure what the current position is these days, I suspect that add-on annual subscription is no longer needed🤔? …I haven’t used iTunes Match for a good many years.
Hope that assists.
Good point. I think I still have that iTunes Match subscription and, if something goes wrong, I can always restore the “ownership” from my local backup copy like you suggested, I guess.
Still exists
Just adding in- I have been experiencing this issue for a very long time. Appears to happen with “Matched” songs (I originally manually added to iTunes as MP3s).
I have a very large Apple Music Library I’ve been building over 20 years so this is crippling my Sonos experience- super disappointing.
Sonos version 15.5
What happens if you ‘delete’ the local copy of the ‘matched’ song, and then download a fresh copy from Apple? Just as a test….I’m curious, not making a guarantee .
The recent update seemed to improve the streaming consistency
What happens if you ‘delete’ the local copy of the ‘matched’ song, and then download a fresh copy from Apple? Just as a test….I’m curious, not making a guarantee .
It works except I have thousands of songs and you don’t know which ones have the problem because they give you a quick warning then skip. If you delete and add again it fixes it.
hiw can you tell which ones are not coded correctly?
Just select them all and remove them and download the copies from the cloud overnight in the iTunes App… I did it with 25,000+ tracks, albeit that was some years ago with an iTunes Match annual subscription back then …and it took me a couple of days (mostly waiting for it to complete)… but it literally takes minutes to sort within iTunes.
The fact that Wi-Fi interference keeps being mentioned by support after this long of a thread of people seeing the same issue is frustrating. For me, this happens on the exact same songs, every single time. Others work perfectly fine. It’s 100% reproducible in my case.
Well, I did a 30-minute web chat, and was told to call the tech support phone number. I waited on hold for 45 minutes, and was told this is a known issue and Sonos is working with Apple on a fix. No ETA. Frustrating, but at least it seems like it’s documented as a known issue.
Same story and I have seen this for months. At least half of all songs I try to play gives this error. It’s a real problem Sonos. You claim to support Apple Music, but not really.
+18
Hi
I refer you to my earlier post:
Hi
Thank you for reporting the issue with TuneIn Podcasts - we were able to replicate the problem and are now investigating.
For everyone else, please note that there are multiple reasons for the “not encoded correctly” error occurring:
I recommend each of 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.
Edit: I should add that if there were an issue with our software rather than encoding/transmission issues, we would also need to you get in touch to have the issue documented and investigated.
My reply immediately before yours was in reference to
This thread relates to Apple Music/iTunes downloads in spirit, but technically it’s title shows it to be about the error message itself, so whether Amazon Music and TuneIn Podcasts are off-topic or not isn’t easy to say, but it is making the thread a little confusing, to be sure. So, please don’t be frustrated - I am not gaslighting you, I am just giving the best-chance-of-being-correct advice to particular people based on what they report. For you, the error would indeed be 100% reproduceable, and nothing to do with interference.
I hope this helps.
Not yet. I’ve only just started trying to look into it. I will do this and open a support ticket or whatever they have.
It is totally a Sonos S2 app issue. I bought Sonos because of it’s integration with Apple Music and my library of 16,000+ songs. This needs to be addressed and fixed asap.
I can play the “wrongly coded” songs air playing to the Sonos system speakers from Apple Music. I can play them on Apple Music directly on my computer, iPad and phone. In my case, I first noticed this issue on a purchased album in my library from iTunes called B.J. Thomas the Living room sessions. I purchased it maybe 5 years ago and It is no longer available thru Apple Music, so I don’t have the luxury of deleting it and re-downloading it again. It is stored in iCloud. It played fine on the S2 app previously, so somewhere along the line, one of the Sonos updates has screwed this up, or failed to address something that recently changed with Apple Music. Apple Music still plays those songs thru my Apple Music app, and airplays them to Sonos speakers without an issue, but I want to use the Sonos S2 app as I did before.
I wonder if there is a way to go back as many Sonos updates as possible to see if any of these wrongly encoded songs will play again.
The title of this thread is “Unable to play song, the song is not encoded correctly since update 15.2”. That is when I believe my issue popped up. Some posters in this thread lumped in with an older DRM issue, which possibly also gave a “song doesn’t play because it is wrongly encoded” message, but this is a new issue. The S2 app played all these now “wrongly encoded songs” perfectly from when I bought the system 2 years ago until fairly recently.
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