diff --git a/beetsplug/replaygain.py b/beetsplug/replaygain.py
index c84226b4c..9ab4fc1e4 100755
--- a/beetsplug/replaygain.py
+++ b/beetsplug/replaygain.py
@@ -40,6 +40,11 @@ def call(args):
         raise ReplayGainError(
             "{0} exited with status {1}".format(args[0], e.returncode)
         )
+    except UnicodeEncodeError:
+        # Due to a bug in Python 2's subprocess on Windows, Unicode
+        # filenames can fail to encode on that platform. See:
+        # http://code.google.com/p/beets/issues/detail?id=499
+        raise ReplayGainError("argument encoding failed")
 
 def parse_tool_output(text):
     """Given the tab-delimited output from an invocation of mp3gain
diff --git a/docs/changelog.rst b/docs/changelog.rst
index c08c28316..b2747cf0a 100644
--- a/docs/changelog.rst
+++ b/docs/changelog.rst
@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@ Changelog
 * :doc:`/plugins/scrub`: Fix an incompatibility with Python 2.6.
 * :doc:`/plugins/lyrics`: Fix an issue that failed to find lyrics when metadata
   contained "real" apostrophes.
+* :doc:`/plugins/replaygain`: On Windows, emit a warning instead of
+  crashing when analyzing non-ASCII filenames.
 
 1.0rc2 (December 31, 2012)
 --------------------------