I am facing similar issues for a few weeks now, and it is very disappointing. I use Deezer streaming service and half of the songs will not play in Sonos due to the encoding error. Can Sonos please be more proactive in solving this issue?

This is not just an apple issue. I'm experiencing the same exact issue using Tidal on a Note 20. Really disappointed I gave Sonos all this money and I can't even listen to my music. 

I have much the same problem. I use Apple Music but also have albums that I have purchased from apple over the years in my library and also CD’s that I own that I have put in my library. Many of these songs, but not all, have this issue. I have entire albums that will not play and others bought and downloaded on the same day that will play. Some of the purchased albums part play, with certain random tracks ignored by the Sonos app with others on the album playing fine.  My system is a mixture of early speakers (Play 1’s and 3’s) and newer stuff, Sonos Ones, One SL’s, a roam and 5’s that are all air play compatible.  Here’s the thing; all the problems are with playing stuff on my newer speakers. The songs that will not play on the newer speakers all play directly from the Sonos app to the Play1 and 3’s! I can even start these songs off on a Play 3 and then use the Sonos app to group the Play 3 with the newer air play speakers and they then play fine.  I note from this and other forums that numerous different streaming services are also affected. This surely must then point to a problem with the software trying to play the music, i.e. the Sonos app?  As for contacting Sonos support, I will but I know from previous contact they are unhelpful and lacking any real technical grasp of the issue.

With regard to Apple Music, it only happens when I use the Sonos app to play an Apple Music playlist I created.  It will skip songs until it gets to one that doesn’t get the encoding error.  However, if I use the Sonos app to find one of the songs in the playlist it won’t play, the song plays fine.  The error only occurs when using the Sonos app to play an Apple Music playlist.  Very odd.  Definitely a Sonos issue, but they have yet to address it.  

The first Sonos guy I talked to in April said it was a known issue and it had to do with the Sonos cloud.  The guy I talked to the other day acted as though he had never heard of this issue.  He put me on hold and came back saying it was an issue with Apple.  I told him it was not, that the guy in April said it was a Sonos issue, and he put me on hold again - he came back and said that Sonos is working with Apple.  To me, that was just a way of getting me off the phone.  I’d rather him say “yeah, it’s on us and we are working on it but no date as to when it will be resolved”.  At least the guy in April was honest.  Every support person should know about this issue and have a response that admits Sonos is working on it.  

Honesty works - we know too much to be jerked around by support guys!

KITFISTO - One question, when you delete the song, re-download it, and add it to a playlist, will it now play from the playlist?  It’s unclear because you said that the re-downloaded song plays, but is that when you go to the song directly or when you put it in a playlist where you got the encoding error before.  I already know that I can play any song through the Sonos app by navigating to the song directly, but when I play if in from the playlist, I get the error message.  

Thanks!

Yes, it will then play from the playlist without any issue. I have course have to add it back to the playlist, because I previously deleted it, but once I do that it works just fine from the playlist. 

Thanks! One more question - did you delete it just from the playlist then re-add it, or did you delete the song from your library, re-download it, then re-add it to the playlist?  Either way, it would take me HOURS to do that for each of my playlists.  I wrote to the CEO today - one thing they can do from an optics perspective is to roll-back to the software version before the one that caused this problem, fix the issue, then re-issue the updates - and explain to users what they are doing and why - better than radio silence and customer service reps who are not up-to-date on this pervasive issue.

Deleted completely from my entire library. 

I’m having a similar issue attempting to play podcasts from IHeartradio. This makes me think it’s not an apple issue, but an issue of some missing codecs in the latest version of Sonos’ updates.

Up until the release of app version 15.1 the songs that I now cannot play directly to Sonos air play enabled speakers played without any issue to those speakers. This is a Sonos app issue that it would appear they have no intention of or no idea how to rectify their mistake! 

I am having this issue as well. I’ve taken down and rebooted all my Sonos devices, and updated software on all devices that I use to listen to Apple Music on Sonos. I refuse to get on the phone with Sonos to just have them tell me to do that again. If they don’t pay attention to forums such as this one and fix the problem, I think the solution is to start looking into other ways to listen to music, like Amazon Echo. That sounds to me as if it may be the easiest, least time consuming, and perhaps even least expensive solution in the long run.

Just had this happen - difference is the error occurred when I was using Android app so start music. Switched to iPad, and the music (same songs/album) played correctly with no errors 

This is driving me absolutely bonkers. Like 1/3 of the songs I have in an Apple Music playlist are getting this error when played directly via Sonos app. If I airplay the song to the speakers directly, they work fine. If I delete the song from my library (not just remove from playlist) and re-add to library/playlist, it works just fine in the Sonos app again. It is absolutely not a Wi-Fi coverage/networking issue as I’ve seen suggested across different google results. 
 

I refuse to do the delete/re-add dance for hundreds of songs, so I guess airplay it is until this annoying bug is fixed. Not sure how this got through their QA, and especially for so long. 

Same issue but not with apple music, but with TuneIn Podcasts.

Here's how:

1. In the Sonos app I search for: Nora Pure (new search method)
2. I open recent shows and select: Nora En Pure - Purified Radio
3. I click the three dots and add this to My Sonos.
4. From this screen I can click on a podcast and it will start.

The above is fine, but there is an issue here:

1. Kill and start the Sonos appication 
2. In My Sonos I see my added podcast of Nora En Pure
3. I open it and select the same postcast to start as before
4. Here comes the error: Unable to play - the song is not encoded correctly.

If I do the search again, I can play the same podcast. This has been an issue for a long time.

15.5 is out.  Doesn’t address the Apple Music “improperly encoded” issue.  Crap. 

Confirming.  First thing I tried out, and nope, issue still exists.

If you use the “My Music” to shuffle your music it seems to work, but that doesn’t solve the playlist issue. 

This is unacceptable. Sonos clearly claims to support Apple Music and I have a huge investment in both Apple Music and Sonos. This became a problem recently. MOST or nearly most of my music library now gives this error.  

I have the same issue. I am using a workaround from above to use airplay. 

I updated to version 15.5 a day ago (06-22-2023) and I am am the same issues with encoded issues. Hopefully this is corrected soon. Wondering if there is a way to down grade to previous versions to avoid the error's message?

Has Sonos said anything about this yet, it is a big issue?

Staff have mentioned this earlier in this thread… see below link:

I would perhaps submit a diagnostic report when you experience the issue and note its reference number and then get in touch with Sonos Support. 

I use an Apple Music subscription with Sonos too and have s local library of 25k tracks (mostly AAC 320 encoded, with DRM removed) and am not currently seeing this issue, so it’s probably best that you contact Support as suggested.

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?

Indeed…it’s an Apple problem, dating back to when they ‘matched’ your own files and downloaded a DRM version. Must be 5 or 6 years ago (maybe more?) when I essentially had to delete my entire ‘matched’ library, and force Apple to download ‘fresh, DRM free’ copies….of music I had ripped myself from various CDs. I remember being somewhat annoyed that Apple thought a DRM version replacing my locally ripped version was preferable. 

Can’t  really point the finger at Sonos on this one, unfortunately. Apple doesn’t share their DRM key used by Apple Music with a ‘third party vendor’ such as Sonos. It’s tedious, but @Ken_Griffiths has the right way to do it, annoying/frustrating as it is.

@Flashback,

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.

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!