I am in the same situation as everybody here, I have at least over a third of my music bought over the years from Itunes that won’t play on my new Era 100. The Sonos Senior Rep I was in touch with just said “That’s an issue on Apple’s end, so unfortunately we can’t fix it, or it would have been fixed long ago.” Which means that Sonos is NOT working on a solution for this issue and they consider Apple to be responsible. However, all of my music plays flawlessly on Denon, Bose and, of course, an Apple HomePod. So, it’s not an Apple issue. It’s just that Sonos has no intent to work on a solution. My return window with Best Buy has just passed by a few days...I’m just going to try to return this device and buy one of the other brands that doesn’t have this issue. I see that this issue started over 10 months ago, hence it doesn’t seem like Sonos is willing to work on it. 

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.

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. 

Welp, it’s be at least 9 months and we are all still in hell

Really annoying this. Half the songs on my Apple Music playlists won't play due to this error.

I'm moving from Sonos, too many issues. Disappointed.

Thanks for all the suggestions above. Adding an old Play 1 to the group seems to be a temporary workaround for me, but it’s difficult to call it any more than a workaround, as who wants to have their entire Sonos customer experience ruined by having to add a Play 1 to the group every time you want to listen to your Apple music collection which has been built over a 15+ year period.

It’s difficult to call it anything other than a Sonos problem if there’s a workaround to get it working with older formats/devices. I’d be happy if the Sonos engineers just ‘auto-swapped’ to the legacy format when it runs into the issue, as they are requesting the tracks from Apple Music. My experience is that it will just jump to the next song (in a Playlist) until it eventually gives up after finding about five unplayable tracks—not exactly the user experience Sonos wants its customers to be getting during their usage of its otherwise great technology. 

So if you’re listening Sonos—and you should be—then give your engineers a nudge and tell them when this happens to auto-retry with a format request to Apple Music that does work with your Play 1 devices, rather than give up. This doesn’t feel like a difficult fix or a big ask, but you’re losing the loyalty of your most precious asset, your existing customers!

Thanks for listening.

Unfortunately, I have my iPhones and iPads set to auto update all apps.  That was a mistake in the case of Sonos.  The new app is awful.  It’s a horrible user interface, and it did nothing to fix this issue with Apple Music and “not encoded properly” error (which for a brief moment I hoped would be its saving grace).

It leaves me between a rock and a hard place because a significant portion of my Apple Music library won’t play via Apple Music in the Sonos app because of this “DRM issue”, and I cannot reliably stream music from my local library on my NAS because music will randomly just stop playing from time to time (it will play fine and suddenly there’s no music even though the Sonos app shows that the song is still playing).  I’ve followed all of the steps provided by Sonos to but my speakers on dedicated, static IP addresses; but I still get this occasional skipping.

Hello,

It seems that since the 15.2 release, there have been several songs that are not playing on your Sonos app. These songs were purchased over time from Apple Music, but they will still play on the Apple Music app. It appears that this issue is happening with all of your Sonos products and you suspect that a lossy codec may have broken with the latest release.

To answer your question, I am not aware of any known issue regarding this matter. However, it is possible that the recent release may have caused compatibility issues with certain codecs or file types. I recommend reaching out to Sonos support to report the issue and see if they have any solutions or workarounds for this problem.

In the meantime, you can try converting the affected songs to a lossless format or try playing them through the Apple Music app. Hopefully, the issue can be resolved soon so that you can enjoy your music on all of your Sonos products again.

Thank you, I will reach out to support.  I can’t convert to lossless, as Apple doesn’t allow this.  Uploading songs to Apple Music auto converts to lossy and these songs aren’t available in Apple Music as lossless.

I spent well over an hour this morning on the phone with Sonos Support. The rep I spoke with escalated the issue with a senior engineer. They had me go through a number of scenarios (rebooting my system, etc), and they apparently were capturing diagnostics. There was acknowledgment that there is an issue here. I had to leave the call after an hour and 20 minutes, and they said they may want to contact me later. But I feel that Sonos is going to deal with this. Here’s hoping they develop a solution soon. 

Having the same issue as all of the above posts. Just got all my Apple Music setup, then connected to the Sonos App and it looks like only about 5% of songs are playable. We have one Symphonisk Table Lamp. Really disappointing, and I hope Sonos comes up with a fix as this was the entire reason we got the lamp/speaker in the first place.

I have nothing much to add, except to say that I’m experiencing the same issue since a recent update, and I think like others also have iTunes Match - though I hadn’t clocked which specific songs are affected, other than it being seemingly random songs from my Apple Music library rather than other music streamed from the wider Apple Music.

Thanks everyone for sharing all the updates.

I reported the same thing to Sonos, and opened a topic in Ask A Question, to no response.  Happened immediately upon updating to 15.2.  Songs that had been playing moments before no longer worked.  i eventually converted files to lossless...not lossless for my time!  Still get the error occasionally.  

Still a problem with 15.3

It’s very frustrating. It’s a problem with music I’ve bought on iTunes because it’s not on Apple Music - and doesn’t play in Apple Music as Lossless…. (another frustration for another day).

Also experiencing this- horrible. Sonos please fix. 

Same issue. A few weeks now.

Have you checked this thread?

I encountered the same problem, half the playlist won’t work but i am using Youtube Music. Guess Sonos that’s broken rather than Apple or Youtube

And, there are multiple possible answers, it may not just be a single cause. Providing data to Sonos CS directly would likely help either identify the particular issue for the programmers working on it, or provide an immediate solution to your particular use case. Either way, a win. 

I am having same issues. Songs not coded from Apple very frustrating. If I play from Apple via air play it is ok. 
Is the sound quality worse if I do that instead of playing from Sonos app?

Sonos this is a big deal you have to fix this. 

I have the same issue.  A large portion of my enormous iTunes/Apple Music library simply won’t play on Sonos now.   

Sonos support: Please fix this soon !!!     Thanks

Hey guys,

If you have not done it yet, you have to call customer service! 

The only fix I have been able to find (Apple Music) is to delete the music that won't play and then re-add it to my library. Then, it works even if you download the same version you had before. It stinks having to go through thousands of songs and do this, but I guess at least it works.

Well, 15.4 didn’t resolve the issue.  I used airplay to stream a playlist to one of my zones, and it worked fine. I then opened the Sonos app and chose the same zone, and it showed the music I was playing through airplay. When I went from song to song through the Sonos app, it was fine as it recognized every song. It’s only when I choose the playlist in the Sonos app that I get the encoding error and it starts skipping songs.  But any of the songs skipped due to an encoding issue can be played through the Sonos app by going to the album or just the song.  Very odd.   

They have no intention of solving this IMO.