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

… so then I tested something. When I tried to play the Beatles, let it be album through the Sonos app and the Apple Music app within the Sonos app. I will get the encoding error on most of the songs. I deleted the album from my Apple Music app, and re-added it. I then went to the Sonos app, opened up the Apple Music app within the Sonos app, and tried to play the songs on the album. They all play perfectly well. So it seems like there may have been some re-tagging by Apple that works well with Sonos when you add the music to your library now, but anything added before Sonos 15.2 doesn’t have updated tags. I don’t know if that’s the right terminology but my test seems to prove that deleting an album you had before 15.2 and re-adding it in Apple Music fixes the problem. There’s no way I’m going to do that for every single album and re-create every single playlist. 

Happening to me as well. Apple Music playlist initiated from the Sonos App. I find numerous songs skipped for the reported “encoding error”. 
 

Sonos can’t figure this out and provide a fix? Disappointing. 
 

Edit: Starting the playlist from Apple Music and Airplaying to the Sonos speaker appears to overcome the problem- at least with the one song I’ve tried this far. I hope Sonos isn’t satisfied with this as a solution. 

I don’t quite understand the delete from your library and redownload fix. With iTunes Match in the Cloud, I rarely have these songs locally at all. Like on my iPhone, I have very few of the Beatles songs downloaded. Some of them play fine on Sonos from a playlist I created, but some have the encoding error. I can even start playing from the Sonos app on my Android phone or Mac or ChromeBook and have the same problem and none of them have these songs downloaded. Am I misunderstanding something?

It’s not a delete / re-download. It’s a delete from your library and re-add to your library. And have fun doing that on all your albums. 

Got it. But if I delete the song from my library, aren’t I deleting the fact that I ever owned it and ripped it and then downloading it back down through the streaming subscription and thus don’t own it if I ever cancel that?

If you perhaps try it in iTunes Music with just one track only to begin with, you will see that you are removing the local copy and then replacing it with a DRM-free copy from the iCloud servers. Simply backup your local copy, if you are concerned.

Once you have tested the process with one track, you can go into delete all those tracks you have held in the iCloud as perhaps one huge batch and similarly remove/download the tracks in one fell swoop.

I recall doing this task some years ago, it was a case of leaving the PC running overnight etc. until all tracks had been replaced. Just to say I used an iTunes Match annual subscription - that was required all those years ago. See link: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204146 

I’m not too sure what the current position is these days, I suspect that add-on annual subscription is no longer needed🤔? …I haven’t used iTunes Match for a good many years.

Hope that assists.

Good point. I think I still have that iTunes Match subscription and, if something goes wrong, I can always restore the “ownership” from my local backup copy like you suggested, I guess. 

As I’ve posted above, I’ve been dealing with a Level 3 Supervisor at Sonos.  His latest comment:  

It's definitely an issue on Apple's end. Our content partner team has regularly meetings with major content partners. We track all of these cases that we get, and present that information to Apple. When they will fix it we can't say, because the fix isn't under our control.

Well, I have the same issue with Amazon Music. It happens randomly but I was able to capture the sonos app screen.

So I don't think this is an Apple issue.

I have a very stable wifi connection that I usually use for gaming. But this happens even when no one is using the network intensely. Even is that's the case, I think if you need to be very carefull with the type of network you use to be able to enjoy the experience that should be like a deal breaker for a lot of folks.

But the thing is that I am consdering returning my Era 300 because of this issue. Even if direct BT connection solves the issue, is not the same quality that directly with the app.

Hi @alfonsoluis 

In all likelihood, you are seeing those errors due to Wi-Fi interference.

A read of our Reducing wireless interference page may help you track down the source of the issue, but I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports, if it does not.

I hope this helps.