diff --git a/YTMusicAPI/Helpers.pm b/YTMusicAPI/Helpers.pm
index 6cea621..9759de8 100644
--- a/YTMusicAPI/Helpers.pm
+++ b/YTMusicAPI/Helpers.pm
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ use HTTP::Cookies;
 use Digest::SHA qw(sha1_hex);
 use Time::HiRes qw(time);
 use Unicode::Normalize;
+use Encode 'encode_utf8', 'is_utf8';
 use locale;
 
 use YTMusicAPI::Constants qw(YTM_DOMAIN USER_AGENT);
@@ -47,7 +48,9 @@ sub get_visitor_id {
     my $visitor_id = "";
 
     if (@matches) {
-        my $ytcfg = decode_json( $matches[0] );
+        my $encoded_match =
+          is_utf8( $matches[0] ) ? encode_utf8( $matches[0] ) : $matches[0];
+        my $ytcfg = decode_json($encoded_match);
         $visitor_id = $ytcfg->{"VISITOR_DATA"} // "";
     }