End of Software Support - Clarifications

End of Software Support - Clarifications
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We announced yesterday that some of our oldest Sonos products will be moving into a legacy mode in May of 2020. Our commitment is to support products with regular software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, and we have a track record of supporting products far longer. 

Here is some public information we’ve shared, gathered into one place to respond to some of your questions in one easy thread, so that people can find the correct information easily.

Beginning in May, software updates and new features from Sonos will only be delivered to systems with only modern products.

After May, systems that include legacy products will continue to work as before - but they will no longer receive software updates or new features. 

Sonos will work to maintain the existing experience and conduct bug fixes, but our efforts will ultimately be limited by the lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products.

We don’t expect any immediate impact to your experience, but access to services and overall functionality will eventually be disrupted, particularly as partners evolve their own services and features. 

 

Customers with both legacy and modern products have time to decide what option is best for them. You can continue to use your whole system in legacy mode - in this case, it will stop receiving updates and new features. 

You will also be able to separate your legacy products from your modern products, so that the modern products can still receive updates and new features, and legacy products can still be used separately. We’ll have more information on how to do this in May when you can take that action.

Another option available to all customers with legacy products is to take advantage of the Trade Up program, which allows you to upgrade older Sonos products to modern ones with a 30% discount. Trade Up will be open to customers at any time should they decide to upgrade. 

We recognize this is new for Sonos owners, just as it is for Sonos. We are committed to help you by making options available to you to support the best decision for your home.
 

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate with asking.

Update 2/22: A message from our CEO

We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn’t exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

 

Patrick Spence
CEO, Sonos


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The email I got from Patrick Spence below. Which fills me with no confidence:

 
 
We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work just as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honour that investment for as long as possible. Whilst legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, whilst legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalising details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

Whilst we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the Trade Up programme we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn't exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Patrick

Patrick Spence
CEO, Sonos
 
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Six obsolete devices. All right, great...
I talk for years to my friends about my great system and now I have to spend a lot of money to keep everything the same ?

 

 

You don’t have to spend any money to keep things the same.  You can keep your device in a legacy system, sans regular updates.  You will get regular break fix and security updates as long as it can be done within the hardware limitations.

 

 

Yeah, and when Spotify, the music service I use, upgrades its service, who's going to update Sonos so the two apps understand each other?

Yeah, and when Spotify, the music service I use, upgrades its service, who's going to update Sonos so the two apps understand each other?

 

Sonos will work to maintain the existing experience and conduct bug fixes, but our efforts will ultimately be limited by the lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products.

 

Sonos actually owns the music service API, so there is a good chance whatever change Spotify makes will fit within the existing API.  If there is minor change required to the API, it sounds to me that Sonos would be willing to do the change.  A major change that won’t work within the limited memory won’t be done.  I don’t know that any one could tell you specifically what hypothetical future changes  would or would not get done.

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Yeah, and when Spotify, the music service I use, upgrades its service, who's going to update Sonos so the two apps understand each other?

 

Sonos will work to maintain the existing experience and conduct bug fixes, but our efforts will ultimately be limited by the lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products.

 

Sonos actually owns the music service API, so there is a good chance whatever change Spotify makes will fit within the existing API.  If there is minor change required to the API, it sounds to me that Sonos would be willing to do the change.  A major change that won’t work within the limited memory won’t be done.  I don’t know that any one could tell you specifically what hypothetical future changes  would or would not get done.


Your rosy interpretation of that one  sentence ignores every later, specific company statements, such as the FAQ quoted below.

Also, just one month ago, Sonos released an update noting:

Spotify Changes: How Spotify connects to Sonos.
Starting soon, your Sonos players will need to be running software version 10.4 or higher in order to be controlled by Spotify apps running on your devices. If you have been keeping your system up to date, you will not notice any changes once this goes into effect. 

 

If that happens in July, the company has made it pretty clear (despite that one vague sentence) that Legacy will go without.. If that weren't true, it would be a pretty simple clarification to make. But Ryan S has confirmed it again and again and again.

 

 

@Whitenoise, the Spotify changes have already been done in v10.6, so no worries.

Sonos 10.6 Now Available

 

Such major changes don’t happen very often.

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@Whitenoise, the Spotify changes have already been done in v10.6, so no worries.

Sonos 10.6 Now Available

 

Such major changes don’t happen very often.

The changes warned about in those notes haven’t happened yet either. It’s the first time in a long time that I can think of where this has come up, and anyone who has updated to 10.4 or beyond won’t even notice it when the changes do kick in. When they do, at some point in the future, people not already running firmware 10.4 or higher on Sonos won’t be able to use their Spotify app to control the system until they update. And as mentioned, the team is going to try and provide bug fixes in the future for legacy devices, as the hardware permits. 

@Ryan S, Thanks for the clarification.

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https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/08/france_fines_apple/

“Under Article 99 of France's 2015 Energy Transition Law, it's illegal for companies to deliberately shorten the life of a product to encourage people to purchase replacements. HOP argued that by slowing down aging phones, Apple was encouraging its customers to buy newer models.”

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Six obsolete devices. All right, great...
I talk for years to my friends about my great system and now I have to spend a lot of money to keep everything the same ?

 

 

You don’t have to spend any money to keep things the same.  You can keep your device in a legacy system, sans regular updates.  You will get regular break fix and security updates as long as it can be done within the hardware limitations.

 

 

And will Spotify keep working on legacy products?

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Read this …. will Spotify keep working on Sonos legacy systems. Or do we have to legally challenge them to stop this fiasco?  

 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/08/france_fines_apple/

@jjohncm, read @Ryan S.’ comment above.

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-support-clarifications-6835969/index135.html#post16403824

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People:  The contact numbers are Nathan Strong Sales Manager and Patrick Spence CEO. I believe the SEC is looking into the sale of 33% of his stock by the Chief Product Office Nicholas Millington right before this fiasco.

https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NASDAQ/SONO/insider-trades/ 

 

 

Tell them what you think ……. get your 50% discount - you deserve it.  Call the board - Volpi  and others. If Ryan deletes my names - use

<first name>.<lastname>@ sonos.com

 

Hello John-

Thank you for contacting Sonos!

Patrick Spence asked me to reach out to you on his behalf.

Our apologies for the confusion regarding the end of software updates for legacy items that is scheduled to commence in May.

While we are unable to reverse recycling, we would like to compensate you for this inconvenience.

If you could please provide the email address associated with these Trade Up products, I will submit a retroactive credit request to our finance team for this order so there is a 50% total discount rather than 30%. You should see this credit in 10-15 business days.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for being a loyal Sonos customers

Best,

Nathan S

 

 

The bold detail above was the deal that ^ should have been offered initially to make any necessary upgrade a slightly less bitter pill to swallow for the ‘loyal’ customer.

Looking objectively from a value for money option though, the 50% discount being offered here ‘as a favour’ still brings the cost to upgrade one speaker at Sonos’ shop price to £250 extra to do the same job as an existing legacy unit.

https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/shop/play5.html

That is, if the purpose of the unit is to play music first and foremost. 

The kind of horse-trading in the quoted post for a supposed ‘premium’ product strikes me as a sales red herring. 

If the company were serious about the premium price tag of the product to compete with Bose et. al. together with the sustainability issues previously discussed at length, why aren’t the company over-engineering the memory & storage capacity of each line so when a software upgrade becomes necessary, the units are then fast enough to handle the capacity demand. 

The chart shows the figures, which are still extremely low considering it’s 2020.

 

 

It’s not as if RAM & storage are particularly expensive commodities as they were when the legacy units were originally manufactured, particularly when you factor in the current cost of the Sonos speaker units.

The conclusion seems to reside in the ‘5-Year support’ which let’s face it, is a thinly veiled sales term for built-in obsolescence & is far more damaging to the Company’s reputation.

Quite rightly, the company has been called out on it & only time will tell if the lost ‘loyal customers’ left fuming by the way this debacle has been handled will return..

 

Moderator note: Edited out private information.
Moderator clarification: All discounts are managed on a case by case basis.

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Sonos' statements have been worthless in part because they're internally inconsistent. No explanation maps onto a coherent model.

This is what makes me most worried.

 

Sonos know that statements of this kind would not be taken very lightly and therefor it would have been in their best interest to be as clear and concise when they announced this.

 

They have been anything BUT that, and i can only see 2 possible reasons.

 

  1. They are very unprofessional
  2. They are trying to hide what they are really trying to do, because they know that “ALL” of their existing costumers would be RAGING.

I must say that the last 2 weeks have made me believe that #2 is what has happened here.

 

They try to downplay what they are intending to do, hoping that people have let out the steam, when they, in may, discover the real extend of what sonos is planning.

 

This is really a case where, if you had good intentions, you would play with an open hand, but the way sonos is trying to cotton coat their words and be super vague about the real extend, points to them not having good intentions, sadly.

 

It is really incredible how fast they have gone from being a company, many people just bought kit from, and did not even look at, what the competitors have developed over the years, to having people actively discouraging people from buying, people openly stating they will never buy sonos again, and people actively selling, their complete setup, modern devices included, to get away from sonos, right now, even if they dont even have a legacy product right now.

Sonos could become a “how not to do it” lesson in “business management 101“

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I no longer have faith in Sonos. The CEO, or someone on his behalf, sends out standard emails enmasse to all that are dissatisfied or complain. He takes no time to answer individual concerns.

I am disgusted by their attitude.

I even asked him if he new who Red Adair was because Sonos need that type of help.

If you get it wrong, then admit and then tell the people affected how you are going to sort it out and fix it.

So far all they can say is they don’t know how to fix it but they will try. If not you will have to pay to update their problems.

Would you or anybody recommend Sonos now?

 

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@Whitenoise, the Spotify changes have already been done in v10.6, so no worries.

Sonos 10.6 Now Available

 

Such major changes don’t happen very often.

The changes warned about in those notes haven’t happened yet either. It’s the first time in a long time that I can think of where this has come up, and anyone who has updated to 10.4 or beyond won’t even notice it when the changes do kick in. When they do, at some point in the future, people not already running firmware 10.4 or higher on Sonos won’t be able to use their Spotify app to control the system until they update. And as mentioned, the team is going to try and provide bug fixes in the future for legacy devices, as the hardware permits. 


Try?????

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Six obsolete devices. All right, great...
I talk for years to my friends about my great system and now I have to spend a lot of money to keep everything the same ?

 

 

You don’t have to spend any money to keep things the same.  You can keep your device in a legacy system, sans regular updates.  You will get regular break fix and security updates as long as it can be done within the hardware limitations.

 

 

And will Spotify keep working on legacy products?


So you can keep obsolete and new products in an out of date state. Do you work for Sonos or their marketing team. We are very unhappy customers who have spent thousands on their useless equipment.


 

 

 

 

 


 Do you work for Sonos or their marketing team. We are very unhappy customers who have spent thousands on their useless equipment.

More factual inaccuracies,  as on your other contributions. None of your products is 'useless'

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Speaking as an accountant, this whole debacle sounds like it was thought up in the accounting department.  

Hey we need to increase revenue..

Why not force our happy customers to purchase new equipment?

We can raise prices just before we announce a trade in program giving a discount to users of the legacy equipment and the discount will be revenue neutral

What could go wrong?

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John B,  They are bricking my 4 controllers and 5 other units.  I believe that is “useless” pal, or do you have another definition.  This is not factually inaccurate.  

 

 

 


 Do you work for Sonos or their marketing team. We are very unhappy customers who have spent thousands on their useless equipment.

More factual inaccuracies,  as on your other contributions. None of your products is 'useless'

 

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Is forcing an upgrade illegal in US?  Thoughts please.  

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So you can keep obsolete and new products in an out of date state. 

The surrogates in this thread are trying really hard wash this fact over.

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Take a look at this one.

 

https://wallmine.com/people/12078/michelangelo-volpi#complete-history

 

 

 

 

 


So you can keep obsolete and new products in an out of date state. 

The surrogates in this thread are trying really hard wash this fact over.

I’d say rather the “surrogates” in this thread (or fanboy, or shill, or other veiled pejorative one prefers) are just trying to bring facts and real-world application of those facts back into the light whenever possible, because they so often get buried among the rants and inaccuracies repeated again and again. There’s plenty of justified anger on the issue at hand and I’ve seen the same “surrogates” express just as much as any over time, though in a more measured and “what do we do now?” manner, trying to help those that wander to this thread in anger find a way to move on. If without Sonos, that’s fine - no one would fault anyone at this point for making that choice, so long as it’s a decision made with facts, not conjecture of hell-and-damnation. 
I’m just as disappointed as anyone else personally, but keeping things in perspective is helpful.
 

 

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So you can keep obsolete and new products in an out of date state. 

The surrogates in this thread are trying really hard wash this fact over.

I’d say rather the “surrogates” in this thread (or fanboy, or shill, or other veiled pejorative one prefers) are just trying to bring facts and real-world application of those facts back into the light whenever possible, because they so often get buried among the rants and inaccuracies repeated again and again. There’s plenty of justified anger on the issue at hand and I’ve seen the same “surrogates” express just as much as any over time, though in a more measured and “what do we do now?” manner, trying to help those that wander to this thread in anger find a way to move on. If without Sonos, that’s fine - no one would fault anyone at this point for making that choice, so long as it’s a decision made with facts, not conjecture of hell-and-damnation. 
I’m just as disappointed as anyone else personally, but keeping things in perspective is helpful.
 

 

I agree. In my opinion, people from both sides are making intentionally misleading statements and this lack of objectivism ends up reflecting poorly on both the parties who have legitimate concerns as well as those that are not bothered by potential changes in the future.

 

Unfortunately, this was bound to happen when there have been no clear and comprehensive announcements made. Hopefully Sonos will elucidate their plans sooner than May.

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So you can keep obsolete and new products in an out of date state. 

The surrogates in this thread are trying really hard wash this fact over.

I’d say rather the “surrogates” in this thread (or fanboy, or shill, or other veiled pejorative one prefers) are just trying to bring facts and real-world application of those facts back into the light whenever possible, because they so often get buried among the rants and inaccuracies repeated again and again. There’s plenty of justified anger on the issue at hand and I’ve seen the same “surrogates” express just as much as any over time, though in a more measured and “what do we do now?” manner, trying to help those that wander to this thread in anger find a way to move on. If without Sonos, that’s fine - no one would fault anyone at this point for making that choice, so long as it’s a decision made with facts, not conjecture of hell-and-damnation. 
I’m just as disappointed as anyone else personally, but keeping things in perspective is helpful.
 

 


Well if there are inaccuracies in here, i would suggest you point your finger firmly at Sonos, for not giving a crystal clear image of what to expect and what not to expect.

If they had not been giving vague and clearly avoiding anwers, most of this would have been avoided.

 

The best way to keep inaccuracies and rumours at bay, is to give clear and concise information that can not be interpreted misunderstood or be subject to speculation.