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?
Happening to me as well. Apple Music playlist initiated from the Sonos App. I find numerous songs skipped for the reported “encoding error”.
Sonos can’t figure this out and provide a fix? Disappointing.
Edit: Starting the playlist from Apple Music and Airplaying to the Sonos speaker appears to overcome the problem- at least with the one song I’ve tried this far. I hope Sonos isn’t satisfied with this as a solution.
… so then I tested something. When I tried to play the Beatles, let it be album through the Sonos app and the Apple Music app within the Sonos app. I will get the encoding error on most of the songs. I deleted the album from my Apple Music app, and re-added it. I then went to the Sonos app, opened up the Apple Music app within the Sonos app, and tried to play the songs on the album. They all play perfectly well. So it seems like there may have been some re-tagging by Apple that works well with Sonos when you add the music to your library now, but anything added before Sonos 15.2 doesn’t have updated tags. I don’t know if that’s the right terminology but my test seems to prove that deleting an album you had before 15.2 and re-adding it in Apple Music fixes the problem. There’s no way I’m going to do that for every single album and re-create every single playlist.
Here’s the answer from the Level 3 Engineee at Sonos, which means Apple has to figure this out.
“Apple returns an invalid identifier for tracks that have been uploaded. It's part of the support for Atmos formatted music which was launched with 15.2. Before 15.2 the Sonos products weren't checking for this identifier, so the error didn't occur. Not all Sonos products can support Atmos, which is why not all Sonos products were affected.
Apple tags tracks in their catalog correctly, which is why you get a playback failure with the uploaded track your playlist is pointing to, but searching for the same track in the catalog plays fine.”
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.
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 don’t even have a HomePod. This is happening to me on YouTube as well so I don’t accept that this is an apple thing unless it has to do with iOS Sonos app
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.
You know where I don’t have a problem is playing music on my HomePod… so strange that Apple is the problem.
Here’s the latest I recd from Sonos:
”The issue discovered with 15.2 is an Apple issue. It's something they put in a temporary fix for in late March, and have a permanent fix planned later this year. Again, this issue is a very specific issue that effects uploaded tracks, and always effects those same tracks.”
So Sonos rolls out an upgrade that breaks Apple Music playlists and it’s an Apple problem? The songs play fine in Apple Music from the Sonos app except if you play them from an Apple playlist in the Sonos app
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. Works fine on some Sonos apparatus , but not on others , so definitely a Sonos problem, rather than Apple or Wi-Fi. But seems to be taking months to resolve.
I have the same problem with YouTube music. The whole system is hardwired so it seems ridiculous it is a network issue. I'm guessing they can't reproduce it.
After emailing the CEO, I was contacted by an L3 Engineer. He said it started with 15.2 but is telling me that it’s a network issue and it a problem with the group I initially started with. Of course, it’s not a zone grouping issue and it’s not a network issue - I have a solid Orbi network that hasn’t been changed in years and I have a Sonos Boost. I think they have no idea how to fix the issue. Seriously, I may order the Nakamichi Dragon and find another way to listen to my music in different rooms.
It’s just remarkable that Sonos has let this go on for so long.
Their support has been almost worthless since the off-shored it… How they don’t know about this problem when you call them is astounding… or would be, if Sonos had kept their support on-shore with people who actually used their products.
Any talk of networks is BS. I’m a network engineer and my home network is all Ubiquiti hardware with most Sonos devices hardwired. I’ve got a range of Sonos, old and new. The workaround of adding an older non-airplay Sonos into the group works 100% consistently for me (in my case it’s an old connect). There is no way it can be network. I have literally tested everything in depth on my network. Music source is Apple Music btw.
After emailing the CEO, I was contacted by an L3 Engineer. He said it started with 15.2 but is telling me that it’s a network issue and it a problem with the group I initially started with. Of course, it’s not a zone grouping issue and it’s not a network issue - I have a solid Orbi network that hasn’t been changed in years and I have a Sonos Boost. I think they have no idea how to fix the issue. Seriously, I may order the Nakamichi Dragon and find another way to listen to my music in different rooms.
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.
Did you submit a diagnostic, and call in to Sonos support? There is certainly more than one possible reason for this, but either way, it may be helpful to provide Sonos additional hard data to look at.
Same problem here. Half my playlist tracks won’t play due to this error. If I add an old non-airplay device into the group it works fine. Needs a fix asap.
This is now occurring for me with SiriusXM streams
I’m having the same error. Songs aren’t encoded correctly. Just started happening and it is very frustrating. Apple Music/iTunes March user and it seems like some but not all of my iTunes Match songs are no longer working. Can’t make sense as to why some play and other don’t. There are some albums where certain songs play and others don’t and they all have the same properties. This is very strange. Sonos please get to the bottom of this!
Here is my experience. I am on 15.5 and just experienced (or at least noticed) this issue. Got the improperly encoded issue today for the first time with songs in Apple Music. I even got the error with the songs when playing directly (not through a playlist). For example, any song on Adele’s 21 album gave the error. We normally use my wife’s Apple account to use her playlists, but I tried switching to my Apple account and the songs from 21 played fine. Then I switched back to my wife’s Apple account and the songs work. Not sure if that’s a solution for others but thought I’d share in case it helps someone else.
Numerous random song in my apple library that I either bought from apple or transferred to my library from owned CD’s wont play on my Sonos Ones, Roam or Fives using the S2 app. However, every single one of these songs will play from the Sonos S2 app to my Sonos Play 1’s and Sonos Play 3. Sonos, go figure!
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.
I don’t believe this is anything recent as this Sonos support document below has been around for some time and mentions the issue with Apple and DRM …
https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/missing-tracks-or-albums-in-sonos-music-library
…and I think it’s that old now, that the Apple link mentioned is no longer valid, but once-upon-a-time it pointed users to an Apple support document for using an iTunes Match subscription to remove the DRM from tracks.
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.
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