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Trending Lyricist I
September 25, 2025
Answered

Soundcloud problem - Unable to play - Song not encoded correctly

  • September 25, 2025
  • 71 replies
  • 5918 views

From yestwrday my S1 system refuses to play soundcloud songs and say that all are encoded inccorrctly.

 

Anyone else experiencing this? Last time I had trouble with Soundcloud service it was a failure with the plugin.. and was fixed centrally.

All other services are working fine!

Thanks in advance!

 

Are

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Best answer by aremarmelade

Ahh monday!

now its working again here in Norway! 😍

71 replies

Lyricist I
September 26, 2025

Same here in Germany. Soundcloud is randomly offline since last night, everything else playing normally. Restarted the System and the router, uninstalled and re-connected Soundcloud. Nothing worked so far. 

Lyricist I
September 26, 2025

I have the same issue on 99% of my Soundcloud liked tracks - BUT NOT ALL tracks

 

I have some that work like normal - while the rest give the “song not encoded correctly” error.

So there is a working connection between Sonos and Soundcloud - but not for all types of tracks.

Lyricist I
September 26, 2025

Hi! Just to confirm and join ‘the party’. Same issue here in The Netherlands. Since 2/3 days. Majority of Soundcloud content not playing with the error as stated by OP. Perfectly able to navigate along folder structure, playlists, etc. All looks normal, even all metadata shows,  until I select a track and then the error displays.

As all other music services work normal, I too expected that it was a Soundcloud specific issue. Untill I tried something today. I have a Playbar and Play5:Gen1. and use S1app for both of them, so I can still pair both of them. When I connect to Playbar only, some tracks are playing there when they still won’t play on the Play5. Once the track is playing, I pair the Play5 and the song plays on both speakers. Then I unpair Playbar en the song continues to play on the Play5. Then, when I select a new song for the Play5 only, the problem returns and I’m back to square 1.

While I still expect the problem is Soundcloud server related, it seems that the Play5 is a bit more affected by this problem than my Playbar is.

Following this thread closely to see any evolution or solution to the issue.

 

Lyricist I
September 26, 2025

I also have the same problem. On 24th in the afternoon everything was working fine, in the evening it stopped working with the same error message on all tracks “not encoded correctly”.

I reset my speaker, readded the Soundcloud service multiple times (with a long wait period before readding), nothing works.

I asked a friend to test on his system and he is also experiencing the same problem.

 

Clearly a general issue with Soundcloud integration.

Lyricist I
September 26, 2025

I am having the same issue. It was very annoying. I had a party last night and was planning on playing some Soundcloud music. I couldn’t do it. 

Lyricist I
September 26, 2025

Same problem here. Some tracks work but most are not.

Lyricist II
September 26, 2025

So just got off the phone with Sonos support.

As expected they understandably have no immediate fix for the issue,
but they went through all the information and diagnostics and are escalating the issue to their higher support and backoffice team.
I tried to give them as much information as I could possibly give them including some possible leads, that came to mind (I am working in IT, networking and dev) and did test multiple troubleshooting suggestings (removing and re-adding services, trying a different app/device (Windows App instead of Android App), restarting all the devices - Sonos as well as my network infrastructure).

They also suggested I could switch to the newer Sonos controller as my system would actually be able to completely, but I read about too many issues in general and things changing in the new app, so I gonna avoid that for now. (And also as far as I saw it’s probably not possible for most of the folks in here anyways.)

They say they gonna contact me some time next week as their technical support team probably won’t be able to fix the issue with the weekend coming up.
But they say their backoffice might put out a notice about ongoing issues with Soundcloud and the S1 controller.

So we probably need to have a bit of patience and let them do their thing and hope the issue gets fixed soonish.

Steve_144
Lyricist III
September 26, 2025

I TOO AM HAVING THIS EXACT ISSUE. I have contact SoundCloud techsup with the following ticket:

personal info has been removed

 

Subject: SoundCloud Playback Errors on Sonos – “Song Not Encoded Correctly” Issue

Message:

Hello SoundCloud Support,

I’m writing as a SoundCloud user who is experiencing persistent playback issues when using SoundCloud through the Sonos app. I am not a Sonos employee—just a customer who’s been doing the troubleshooting that I believe Sonos tech should be handling, but unfortunately, they are not.

The issue: Approximately 99% of songs played via SoundCloud on Sonos trigger the following error message:

“Unable to play 'xxx' – the song is not encoded correctly.”

This problem is not isolated. Multiple users on the Sonos community forums have reported the same issue. Most have already restarted their routers, speakers, and apps. I personally have removed my SoundCloud account from Sonos and re-added it, but the issue persists.

This is a significant disruption to our listening experience and has been ongoing without resolution. We would appreciate a clear explanation of what’s causing this and whether this is a SoundCloud issue or not so that I may contact the culprit vendor.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Have a Nice Day,

(not Sonos Support)

Lyricist II
September 26, 2025

I TOO AM HAVING THIS EXACT ISSUE. I have contact SoundCloud techsup with the following ticket:

personal info has been removed

 

Subject: SoundCloud Playback Errors on Sonos – “Song Not Encoded Correctly” Issue

Message:

Hello SoundCloud Support,

I’m writing as a SoundCloud user who is experiencing persistent playback issues when using SoundCloud through the Sonos app. I am not a Sonos employee—just a customer who’s been doing the troubleshooting that I believe Sonos tech should be handling, but unfortunately, they are not.

The issue: Approximately 99% of songs played via SoundCloud on Sonos trigger the following error message:

“Unable to play 'xxx' – the song is not encoded correctly.”

This problem is not isolated. Multiple users on the Sonos community forums have reported the same issue. Most have already restarted their routers, speakers, and apps. I personally have removed my SoundCloud account from Sonos and re-added it, but the issue persists.

This is a significant disruption to our listening experience and has been ongoing without resolution. We would appreciate a clear explanation of what’s causing this and whether this is a SoundCloud issue or not so that I may contact the culprit vendor.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Have a Nice Day,

(not Sonos Support)

Well, as far as I could pick up on, their support department wasn’t even aware there was anything ongoing.

So I do very much understand that these issues are annoying especially with a product that’s in the higher price bracket, but the people working in Sonos support are just doing their jobs, so I tend to be respectful to them. It usually helps to speed along issues more than being abrassive.

For clairfication, I wouldn’t call your ticket abrassive, but clearly it’s agitated.
If you had prior bad experiences with Sonos support, then your best bet to petition for change would writing a mail to their new CEO. (You can find their e-mail here at the bottom https://support.sonos.com/en-us/contact )

Lyricist III
September 26, 2025

Same issue here in Canada, only SoundCloud does not play with the same encoding error.