Unable to play song ‘song’ - the song is not encoded correctly. Issue since 15.2

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.

Did they say this is a lossless issue? I have been having the same issue with my Apple Music library recently. Sonos skips half the songs in a playlist.  Thanks

Has this been solved? I’ve not experienced any problems since 2018 and since the latest Sonos app update I can no longer play music via Apple Music that was purchased via iTunes. This includes music purchased on iTunes long ago as well as within the last 30 days.

I’m having the same problem. I’m an Apple Music subscriber, but also have lots of music in Apple Music that was uploaded/matched years ago via iTunes Match. Songs that were uploaded/matched no longer play on my AirPlay-enabled Sonos speakers (though they DO play on my older, non-Airplay Sonos speakers, like the Play:3). And when try to play the Apple Music version of the song, I still get the encoded error. 

I see in the forums that others have recently reported that same problem. So something has changed/broken, either on Apple’s side or Sonos’. It is rather frustrating

I’m having this same issue and it’s quite frustrating.  I have thousands of songs that are iTunes Matched.  I just invested thousands of dollars in a Sonos system for the house and it’s basically useless now.  Hope someone actually takes responsibility and addresses the issue soon.

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. 

I’ve found a work-around YMMV.
The ‘not encoded’ error occurs when sending to any Airplay-enabled speakers. In my case this is all my speakers other than a stereo pair of PLAY:3s.
Context: I have a stereo pair of PLAY:3s, 1 Move, and 2 SYMFONISK Bookshelf speakers
    1    Ungroup all speakers (I left the stereo PLAY:3s in stereo config)
    2    Source of music: My Library (iTunes catalogue)
    3    Send the music to any of the Airplay-enabled speakers, encoding error occurs
    4    Send the music to the PLAY:3s - success
    5    Add in one of the Airplay-enabled speakers, now the music plays to that/those speakers as well
    6    Drop the PLAY:3s, music keeps playing to the Airplay-enabled speakers
    7    Stop all music
    8    Try to play that same album, direct to an Airplay-enabled speaker - works
    9    Try to play another ‘My Library’ album directly to Airplay-enabled speaker, fails, back to step 4

Here is a quick video showing steps 2-6:

If I had to guess, the album that worked on step 8 was cached locally in a way that worked with all speakers.  Switching albums reset the cache and you are back to where you started.  What this does confirm, though, is the issue is likely on Sonos’ side, not Apple’s.  If you were able to play the album on a non-Airplay speaker, and even trick it into playing on an Airplay speaker after, then it’s something about how Sonos is interacting with the content, not Apple.

I wish there was a way to revert whatever update was sent to these speakers.

As I’ve noted, I can definitely confirm that the problem only occurs on AirPlay-enabled Sonos speakers. And if I start to play a problematic song to a Sonos group that includes both an AirPlay-enabled Sonos speaker and non-AirPlay Sonos speaker, the song does play on both. And if I ungroup them, the song continues to play on the AirPlay Sonos speaker. Interesting…. but not really a viable workaround.

The more I think about this, the more frustrated I get. Essentially, most of my Sonos speakers currently can’t play a substantial portion of the music in my Apple Music library (that which I uploaded/matched via iTunes Match years ago). That’s hundreds of songs. And this is a recent problem…. it wasn't this way prior to at few weeks ago. It’s on Sonos to fix this ASAP, regardless of whether it’s completely Sonos’ fault, or there’s something different in Apple Music that is causing this on Sonos. Either way, it’s Sonos’ issue to fix. There was a new release today (15.3), but that didn’t fix this problem. I plan to call support back to tomorrow to get an update.

An update…. right after I sent the last post, I received an email from Sonos Support requesting a callback as this issue has been escalated. That’s happening on this Thursday. Hopefully this will help them make progress.

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.

When I spoke with escalated Sonos support last week, and we went through some testing scenarios where they could view diagnostics, they did acknowledge that there is apparently a problem with playing uploaded/matched songs from Apple Music to AirPlay-enabled Sonos speakers from within the Sonos app (this music plays fine on non-AirPlay Sonos speakers). I thought I had made this clear to the first Sonos support rep I spoke with; i.e., that this only happens on AirPlay-enabled speakers, but apparently that fact wasn’t noted. This new rep I spoke with last week did acknowledge this. So Sonos knows about it. Hopefully they are working on a fix. It’s possible that something Apple changed is causing this problem. If this turns out to be true, then it’s still on Sonos to handle it since the problem is with how this music doesn’t play on AirPlay-enabled Sonos speakers.

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. 

This may or may not apply to other users, but we’ve managed a “work-around” by not using the Sonos App at all, and just playing our Apple Music from the Music App using the Airplay button. You can select the Sonos speaker using Airplay and it plays all our Apple Music, even the ones that Sonos refused to play.

Same issue. A few weeks now.

I finally got confirmation from Sonos support that they acknowledge the issue and are working on it.  No dates or promises.

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

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.

The way to push is by calling customer service, because these guys from Sonos might not be checking this forum. 

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.