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

Interesting. Thanks for the correction. 

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.

I have Play 3 and I just have my library of MP3s on OneDrive. Only a handful of songs work. Has there been any overall update on this?

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

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. 

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 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. 

Oh no! I’m really sorry to hear about your speaker death. That sucks. Hopefully Sonos addresses this issue themselves soon so that we all can continue to enjoy our large investments for years to come. I had no idea at all that this may perhaps be an issue. I sort of feel like an idiot for not researching it enough, but oh well. 

Hope it provides a solution for your music listening Washufisi. Glad to help. Just wish Sonos were! I’ve invested well over £5k on speakers and this situation is so annoying and all they want to do is blame everyone else. To add insult to injury my 30 month old Roam died the other day having got stuck in sleep mode for no reason. Totally shot. Wont be buying any more Sonos stuff that’s for sure! 

You need either a Play1 or Play 3 if you can indeed pick one up second hand. I’ve noticed they seem to be getting rarer and pricier too!! Can’t think why Sonos?! 

Frustrating this still hasn’t been fixed, I remember speaking to CS nearly a year ago about the encoding issues. 

For me it’s all purchased music, if I get something from Apple Music via the subscription it always plays fine, if I bought a track from the iTunes store it’s unplayable, and this is consistent.

A track only becomes playable if it transitions from a purchase only to being available via the subscription, in which case it’ll start to work.

Not sure exactly how to fix this as it’s clearly not just a Sonos issue, as my car can’t play purchased tracks either.

Thanks @Airgetlam for the reply! It is always possible something changed on Apple’s side. 

I tested @CambridgeZach’s method and can confirm the following:
1. On a Gen 1 Beam Soundbar, playing the holiday playlist fails with the encoding error. Same on my Sonos port, Arc, beam gen 1, and current gen amp.
2. On a Play:1 A200, playing the holiday playlist plays without error.
3. Group the A200 with the Beam Soundbar prior to starting playback, the playlist plays without error.

Next, I tested removing the A200 partway into playing the song.

Here is the setup: Group the A200 with the Beam Soundbar prior to playing, start the first song (starts playing on both devices), remove the A200, then test the scenario.

A- Perform setup, then let the track finish playing (tested with a 3min 31s song) - it completes without error. Subsequent tracks play successfully (listened to the next 10 songs or so).

B- Perform setup, then skip to next song - playback fails with the encoding error as well as subsequent tracks.

C- Perform setup, then advance the playback slider (same behavior whether it is 3s or 1min+) - playback fails to resume with the encoding error.

D- Perform setup, then hit pause, wait 5s, hit play. Playback continues and subsequent songs play as well. Same multi-song test as above, tested another 5 or so.
 

I verified that scenario A,B,C, and D with an A200 being in the group with the Gen 1 Soundbar resulted in successful playback/navigation without any issues.

Tagging @Corry P here as FYI; perhaps it is as simple as a specific encoding is requested when an A200 is in a room group? Certain user interactions cause the stream to be restarted, and when that happens without the A200 in the group an encoding is requested that is not available/invalid from Apple Music for that song?

The music I am listening to in this playlist comes from content that was uploaded as part of iTunes Match and is not available in the Apple Music Store.

Build is 75145120.

At least I have a workaround for the holidays. It was driving my family nuts that every time I left the house with my phone airplay would disconnect and the holiday music would stop.

I’ll update to the latest version and go through the process of running all these scenarios within 10 minutes and then submitting diagnostics and following up with support to share that detail in addition to the above repro.

Thanks!

All of a sudden this week , the Radio Station (Talk Radio) started sending error messages Music not encoded properly. Unable to listen to the radio. Radio station is WSB 95 in Atlanta, 97.5. What happened?