Apple Music playback interrupted saying 'Unable to play - the song is not encoded correctly'

Amazing that this still hasn’t been fixed.   I’ve been using my Sonos setup for years without issue, and then 4 months ago this error popped up making the whole system frustrating and unusable…   Huge fail making me question remaining in the ecosystem...

Does anyone know if Sonos has even acknowledged the issue? 

Glad to find this thread. I thought i was the only one suffering this issue, in my cas has been going on for 4 months, more or less. Please work it out as soon as possible

This is ridiculous, can’t play any Dolby Atmos tracks at all, starts playing and then complains about encoding and cuts out. Sonos advertised this feature a lot when it was coming and released and now it’s here, it’s all Apples fault and we just have to wait for a fix!! I might as well just get rid of the Beam and get a HomePod, at least I’ll be able to listen to music without constant errors that neither Sonos nor Apple seem bothered about fixing. Google the error, it’s been going on for years, and affects all services not just Apple so this is something Sonos needs to fix. They enabled support for spatial audio and now it’s broken. 😡 

Same problem. Some tracks on Apple music on SL and One fail with ‘it is encoded using an unsupported digital rights management system’. However playing on a Play 1 works. Grouping a Play 1 and SL also plays fine. Also airplay to SL works fine. Not sure if this is a failure of Apple or Sonos, but it sure does ruin the experience. I would consider the Apple Music service to be in a degraded state rather than fully operational.

I spoke to support this morning and network issues were mentioned immediately. This is not good enough. If this has been known for 4 months then the customer should be advised that you’re waiting on a fix and not to start troubleshooting connectivity issues.

This is a Sonos problem in my view. I play Apple Music in several places, including the car, Bluetooth speakers and HomePods - not a single one of those has ever given me any issues.

This only happens on a (newer) Sonos product, so whether it’s Apple related or not, it is up to Sonos to get this sorted ASAP as it is a feature they’ve advertised heavily and it doesn’t work properly. It worked fine for quite a while, this is a recent issue that’s started for me so an update must have caused it. It’s not good enough for such an expensive product that claims to support Airplay 2, Apple devices and Spatial Audio, but clearly in its current state it doesn’t. 

Just reported this to Sonos. They have agreed that it is a problem.

It looks like Apple new releases since early September 2023 may have this issue. But only if you play from the Sonos App. Airplay and playing through older devices such as the Play1 will work.

If you group an older Sonos device such as the Play1 together with the failing Sonos playback device it will work.

Just to be clear the error is ‘it is encoded using an unsupported digital rights management system’

Yeah same error here. I can airplay straight from Apple Music to the Beam, that works fine. Using the Sonos app to benefit from Dolby Atmos is where the problem appears. I’ll report it also. Thanks.

Same here, but not all tracks. For example whole album Forty licks from Rolling Stones skips every song with that DRM message, but lot of other songs/albums works. 
This is a problem Sonos, its really time to fix it.

For anyone with this issue, I just had an update on the Sonos App (iOS) and the songs that were not playing, are now playing correctly. Give it a try!