Unable To Play. Something went wrong. Try Again Later

Unable to play, Something went wrong. Try again later. Look familiar ? This is an iOS-specific problem that occurs when trying to stream podcasts in Apple Podcasts on iPad or iPhone If you’ve seen this error, you’ll know it’s surprisingly hard to find any information about what it is or how to fix it.

The Problem

I came across this first when setting up a new podcast for one of my clients. For various reasons, we hosted the show on Soundcloud and used the RSS feature to pipe the podcast into Apple, Spotify, Google Play etc.

When it came time to test, I found everything working well; artwork, initial show episode, titles and description all being delivered well to all platforms. I could subscribe, download and stream successfully on my desktop computer. It was only when my client did something that I hadn’t thought of trying, that I discovered something big. Really big.

If a listener decided to just click on the episode play button on an iPhone prior to subscribing, the audio will attempt to stream playback rather than downloading the file.

And then, gentle reader we encounter The Problem.

Unable to play, Something went wrong. Try again later.

An error written by someone who probably has the “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters on their wall. Unhelpful, but reassuring. For a while I thought it must be network related and maybe “later” everything would be fine.

I contacted Soundcloud Support, who replied with a hand written canned response to “refresh the feed on Podcast Connect“. It seemed unlikely and in the end amounted to “Not us, but turn it off and turn it on again”. Only not as helpful.

I contacted Apple Partner Support who told me that “Many people are also experiencing the same issue. Please be reassured our developers are aware of the this“. A response amounting to…. nothing much at all.

The Fix

So, turning to the Australian Podcasters Facebook group, I got the usual “perhaps you have uploaded a wet haddock by mistake” type of replies that assume you are a less experienced poster . But, no!

Until, that is Mr James Cridland dropped the enlightening “Is it a VBR file?“. Not according to audio Swiss army knife, Amadeus Pro which was the software that encoded the file. But, yes! My other audio software disagreed…… it was indeed a VBR file.

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Variable Bit Rate – a compressed audio file encoded in such a way that the data rate responds to the complexity of the audio content.
Constant Bit Rate – a compressed audio file with a static data rate all the way through.

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In the small-print specs of some streaming platforms, you may see mention of CBR along with 44.1khz/48.0khz sample rate files. Because, as it turns out VBR encoded files do not stream. Presumably the variable nature makes it difficult for the platform to reliably buffer the incoming audio stream.

So, what Apple, Soundcloud and Google do not tell you is that an mp3 podcast file, uploaded to your channel MUST be CRB if it is to stream in Apple Podcasts on iOS.

My solution was to go back to my original WAV file and re-encode it in Steinberg’s Wavelab audio mastering editor as a CBR 44.1khz MP3 file, but Audacity or most other wave editors will have a similar option in the MP3 Export setting.

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