Answered

Unable to play X - and the song is not encoded correctly

K

I was getting this error from time to time, but now I'm getting it on 3/4 of songs... Seems random, as sometimes a song that was working fine would refuse to play and start showing this error (or vice versa). 

My music source is YouTube Music. I've tried rebooting the speaker, reinstalling te app, rebooting the Wi-Fi router, etc. Also tried using an ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi. Nothing seems to work. 

Diagnostic number : 1167656549

Screenshot :

Thanks in advance! 

 

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Best answer by Annazel S 22 January 2021, 22:23

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101 replies

5

No, if Ken were an engineer at Sonos, his account would be marked as a ‘Sonos’ employee account. Like most of us who have large post counts, we tend to suggest things that have worked in99.99% of the cases, and then try to refer people who continue to have difficulty to deal with actual Sonos support, rather than getting an answer here in the community. Only Sonos employees have access to the hard data present in the system diagnostic. 

For readers experiencing this issue, tech support is as worthless as this thread and you'd be better off switching to a different speaker. There. Issue resolved! 

Ken_Griffiths

Ken, are you an engineer at Sonos? Tech support? It's incredibly frustrating the amount of money people have spent on these speakers to be having an issue like this...for two years now! How clueless are you? How many times do people have to tell you, yeah, I tried that!? 

No, I’m not a Sonos employee and apologies 🙏 if I’ve perhaps upset you in some way. I’m just another Sonos user like yourself and was trying to offer some simple things to try to fix your issue. I’ll just step out and leave it with you and just to add I sincerely hope you get it sorted. If not, you can always go onto submit a Sonos Diagnostic Report, noting it’s reference number, and then contact Sonos Support Staff direct via this LINK.

Good luck and hope you find the answer to the issue.

5

Ken, are you an engineer at Sonos? Tech support? It's incredibly frustrating the amount of money people have spent on these speakers to be having an issue like this...for two years now! How clueless are you? How many times do people have to tell you, yeah, I tried that!? 

No, I’m not a Sonos employee and apologies 🙏 if I’ve perhaps upset you in some way. I’m just another Sonos user like yourself and was trying to offer some simple things to try to fix your issue. I’ll just step out and leave it with you and just to add I sincerely hope you get it sorted. If not, you can always go onto submit a Sonos Diagnostic Report, noting it’s reference number, and then contact Sonos Support Staff direct via this LINK.

Good luck and hope you find the answer to the issue.

Thanks Ken. As stated, I did this. 

S
Userlevel 2

By the way, in case it helps anyone, i get this message when I start playing from the Sonos app but not all mediapayers. So, if I start playing on my phone from spotify and then cast it to my Sonos speakers from the Spotify app as opposed to Sonos app, it seems to work. God knows why...

 

 

Airgetlam

Probably because Spotify uses different servers to feed your phone than they do to feed your Sonos. 

Bruce
5

In addition to contacting the worthless customer support at Sonos, I did a factory reset of all my devices. This didn't work either.

A

My CD collection ripped to a PC used to play absolutely fine and now about half are listed as “not encoded properly” whilst they still play fine on the PC Media player.  Other tracks ripped on the same device/software play absolutely fine.

To blame Spotify or any other provider is not acceptable and Sonos should be looking at this issue.  It’s clearly been a problem for a while and still has not been resolved.

5

Sonos is crap with crap customer support. They said they would escalate my call to engineering and call me back. I'm still waiting on an update 3 weeks later.

D

I am having the same issue with Apple Music as my provider I am very anxious that this is not going to be resolved. I have invested a lot in to my Sonos systems! very worried! 

S

I have been getting this problem as well and also use Apple Music. If you have an Apple Music subscription there is. A work around. In the Apple Music app delete the album from your library then add it back again. Doesn’t mean Sonos should’nt fix it though. Clearly NOT a wifi problem as this would not solve the issue if it was.

J

I have this issue with Apple Music. It’s got nothing to do with “YouTube’s Engineers”. It’s only certain songs. It’s clearly a Sonos issue for them to fix.

Ken_Griffiths

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

D
Userlevel 2

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

The issue is related to iTunes Match vs Apple Music.  Something changed recently with either Apple or Sonos where Sonos can no longer play songs that are in your Apple library that were loaded via iTunes Match vs songs on Apple Music.  This is why removing them from your library and re-adding works.  You are removing the iTunes Match version and putting in the DRMed, newly encoded Apple Music version. 

The issue is for people like me that have thousands of songs dating back years from iTunes Match, some of which are rare songs and music not on Apple Music.  They can no longer be played via Sonos directly.  Whether this is caused by an Apple change or Sonos change, I don’t know.  I can play the songs in Apple Music app, but not on Sonos app.

Ken_Griffiths

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

The issue is related to iTunes Match vs Apple Music.  Something changed recently with either Apple or Sonos where Sonos can no longer play songs that are in your Apple library that were loaded via iTunes Match vs songs on Apple Music.  This is why removing them from your library and re-adding works.  You are removing the iTunes Match version and putting in the DRMed, newly encoded Apple Music version. 

The issue is for people like me that have thousands of songs dating back years from iTunes Match, some of which are rare songs and music not on Apple Music.  They can no longer be played via Sonos directly.  Whether this is caused by an Apple change or Sonos change, I don’t know.  I can play the songs in Apple Music app, but not on Sonos app.

I thought Apples iTunes Match was there to allow users to remove DRM - that’s what I did with my iTunes Match annual subscription many years ago and then ditched it. Anyhow I found this from Sonos Support literature…

Some purchased music may be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). This prevents these files from being shared via third-party apps like the Sonos app. This issue most commonly affects music purchased from iTunes before they switched to DRM-free music.

Apple no longer sells DRM protected music and all music now for sale is free of any playback restrictions. If you still have some tracks that are DRM protected and unplayable on Sonos, iTunes Match allows you to upgrade your music to a DRM-free version. More information on iTunes Match and instructions on upgrading to DRM-free can be found on Apple’s website.

—

The link embedded above isn’t very helpful, clearly it isn’t a Sonos issue from what’s been said here already, but if your DRM protected music purchases were from Apple originally, then maybe speak with their customer support service and see what they say.

D
Userlevel 2

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

The issue is related to iTunes Match vs Apple Music.  Something changed recently with either Apple or Sonos where Sonos can no longer play songs that are in your Apple library that were loaded via iTunes Match vs songs on Apple Music.  This is why removing them from your library and re-adding works.  You are removing the iTunes Match version and putting in the DRMed, newly encoded Apple Music version. 

The issue is for people like me that have thousands of songs dating back years from iTunes Match, some of which are rare songs and music not on Apple Music.  They can no longer be played via Sonos directly.  Whether this is caused by an Apple change or Sonos change, I don’t know.  I can play the songs in Apple Music app, but not on Sonos app.

I thought Apples iTunes Match was there to allow users to remove DRM - that’s what I did with my iTunes Match annual subscription many years ago and then ditched it. Anyhow I found this from Sonos Support literature…

Some purchased music may be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). This prevents these files from being shared via third-party apps like the Sonos app. This issue most commonly affects music purchased from iTunes before they switched to DRM-free music.

Apple no longer sells DRM protected music and all music now for sale is free of any playback restrictions. If you still have some tracks that are DRM protected and unplayable on Sonos, iTunes Match allows you to upgrade your music to a DRM-free version. More information on iTunes Match and instructions on upgrading to DRM-free can be found on Apple’s website.

—

The link embedded above isn’t very helpful, clearly it isn’t a Sonos issue from what’s been said here already, but if your DRM protected music purchases were from Apple originally, then maybe speak with their customer support service and see what they say.

Correct.  These ARE iTunes Match tracks so they are DRM-free.  Apple Music songs DO have DRM because you must maintain a subscription in order to play the songs.  So by removing the non-DRM song from my library (iTunes Matched) and replacing with DRMed (Apple Music), it works.  My guess is with the 15.2 update that added Atmos support, they broke something in handling Apple music without DRM.  This is most definitely a bug in Sonos code.

BTW - I just got off a 45 minute call with Sonos support that was completely useless.  They didn’t acknowledge anything was wrong.  They kept reciting information from their website that was irrelevant.  We’ll see if I get any information from the tier 3 escalation.

Ken_Griffiths

@davidbashman,

It’s been quite a while (years, I guess), but I recall I ‘matched’ my purchased and ripped tracks via iTunes and then deleted the ones in my local iTunes folders and downloaded the DRM-free tracks. I recall the itunes match subscription was yearly and around £21.99 per year (or similar). I subscribed monthly and separately for ‘leased’ Apple tracks in those days,  which I had not purchased and they wouldn’t play when my subscription ended - so I deleted those and kept all my own purchased (DRM-free) tracks on my NAS in a separate library.. alongside those many CD tracks I ripped separately from my CD’s (all tagged using MP3Tag). I eventually moved away from Apple and switched to Amazon Music, trying Spotify and Deezer too in-between.

In recent times, I have resubscribed to Apple mainly to see what I think of their service now they’ve introduced (lossy) Atmos music on Sonos and I have uploaded/matched my local library back to the iCloud servers again and now have that online library, which appears in the S2 App (see screenshot attached).

I’ve not (yet) added any Apple ‘leased’ tracks to my library so it’s all just my matched/uploaded DRM -free tracks and whilst there are thousands of them and I haven’t tested them all - I’ve not yet encountered an issue whilst playing them or any tracks from other areas of the App… albeit in the other areas I’ve mostly been listening to Atmos playlists on both the Arc and Era 300’s.

So I’m not seeing the same issue so far, but if I do encounter an issue I will report back here and let you know. Note I’ve only re-subscribed to the Apple service some six or seven weeks ago so not had the chance to test everything but will let you know if I see the same issue.

I did just randomly select a few tracks across the library and they all started playing okay.

Anyhow I hope you get things sorted. 👍

1 Attachment
G

Same problem with Apple Music. I'll try what has been suggested previously and see if that works. Any other suggestions? Thanks.

S
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

This morning I added some podcast from Spotify to Albums in the Sonos app and none of them will play. They all give this [not coded correctly] message. When played straight from the Spotify app everything works fine. Other Spotify tracks also play fine too so somehow it's only the podcasts.

I added them by playing one from Spotify, then ooen the Sonos app and add them to Albums. I do it this way because i can't search for podcast in the Sonos app, it never gives me any results.

 

M

i have the problem with itunes where i downloaded cds to my library - clouded music will play but the music that was downloaded from cd to itunes errors - support could not help 

Airgetlam

When were they downloaded? Have you tried deleting the downloaded files, and getting fresh copies from Apple?

Bruce
S

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

The issue is related to iTunes Match vs Apple Music.  Something changed recently with either Apple or Sonos where Sonos can no longer play songs that are in your Apple library that were loaded via iTunes Match vs songs on Apple Music.  This is why removing them from your library and re-adding works.  You are removing the iTunes Match version and putting in the DRMed, newly encoded Apple Music version. 

The issue is for people like me that have thousands of songs dating back years from iTunes Match, some of which are rare songs and music not on Apple Music.  They can no longer be played via Sonos directly.  Whether this is caused by an Apple change or Sonos change, I don’t know.  I can play the songs in Apple Music app, but not on Sonos app.

This makes a TON of sense.  I’ve got a ton of music that I uploaded or added to my Apple Music library via iTunes Match years ago.  Deleting from my library and re-adding (with the AM DRM version) works for me, but there’s no chance I’m going to do this dance for thousands of songs.

Ken_Griffiths

This makes a TON of sense.  I’ve got a ton of music that I uploaded or added to my Apple Music library via iTunes Match years ago.  Deleting from my library and re-adding (with the AM DRM version) works for me, but there’s no chance I’m going to do this dance for thousands of songs.

Many (many) years ago, I opted to get an iTunes Match yearly subscription, it was less than £20 IIRC🤔?

I highlighted every single ‘digitally purchased’ track in iTunes and deleted those tracks, literally in minutes, then I highlighted all again (each now showing as being stored in the iCloud) and downloaded the track again, giving me the DRM-free version of every highlighted track - it took seconds to undertake these things, but took many hours (overnight) to re-download the thousands of tracks - I have a medium-large music  library (25,000 tracks) many purchased digitally and many ripped from purchased CD’s put together over a good many years - but it was well worth that single yearly iTunes Match subscription payment to sort these things back in the day - and it really is easy to delete and re-download all overnight, or perhaps several nights, if your library is huge.

The action of doing the switch to DRM-free does not take much effort at all to get the process underway, once the download starts for all, you can just walk away and goto bed, or work, or whatever.

M
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Same problem here with Sirius and Google play music which morphed into the crappy YouTube music. I have had the not encoded message for years but is getting worse as time moves on. When it disconnects the wifi is still available so I find it hard to believe it is a wifi router issue. I actually got a new router because I thought it may be the problem but no, it still exists. This is undoubtedly a Sonos issue as the cross service problem shows. As I said it is now happening 5-6 times in 6 hours and if there isn't a fix soon I will selling my Sonos and go elsewhere 

So, ¿what’s your new router? It seems to me  that many models of standard home Wifi routers are either not compatible with Sonos, or prompt to have unstability issues. My Sonos Roam is been like this for months, pausing the music randomly using Airplay, Spotify Connect and Apple Music, so it seems to me that Sonos just works fine in pristine or interference free environments, I’ve really no idea what to do       

 

La discapacidad visual no es ningún impedimento, a disfrutar Bros
T
Userlevel 1
Badge

please sonos this issue has been a problem for months and months - invested heavily in sonos and apple - since 2007 sonos and mid 90s apple - dont let us down!

K

Aaand the same error occurred yesterday with YouTube Music. Tried all the workarounds listed here.  No change. Sad.

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