End of Software Support - Clarifications

I would guess that it’s somewhere around 10%.  I’m not sure that it really matters though, as that percentage is only useful for customers who want claim this decision will be the end of Sonos, or by those that want to claim it’s not.  We will see how it unfolds in the next year or so.  Regardless, customers should do what they feel is best for them regardless of what everyone else is going to do.

Such decisions are not just about current financial impact though.  If the decision is technical in nature than it stands to reasons that some time in the future, there will be another batch of speakers marked as legacy, and they will want to be able to match the 30% discount at that time.

The trade discount, is not limited to like products.  You can use the trade for anything in the Sonos store.  I get that a lot of people are going to trade “like for like”, but in many cases, people are going to trade in a Connect:amp for a pair of Sonos Ones, for example.

The trade in offer is not the only motivation for people to opt for a modern system though.  The other reasons are the potential new upgrade features and Sonos products that you won’t be able to use in a legacy system. It’s those reasons that people are upset about the legacy system to begin with.  

5 GHz WiFi isn’t an advantage for audio, except in the case of home theatre setups, which Sonos uses.  Almost  all the products Sonos currently offers has airplay 2.  I don’t get the last part of your statement as Sonos does allow you to use your equipment after they choose to stop supporting it   If that were not the case, there would be no legacy system to talk about.

I don’t agree that “that percentage is only useful for customers who want claim this decision will be the end of Sonos, or by those that want to claim it’s not.” I think it’s relevant in that Sonos has demonstrated that they are willing to sacrifice 10% of their user base with little notice and litte incentive to upgrade. Furthermore, assuming that your 10% number is correct, then these are certainly longer term customers and are likely more heavily invested in the ecosystem. I would love ot know what percentage of customers own legacy equipment and of those how many also own “modern” equipment and will be forced to either neuter their modern equipment, split their network, or get rid of the legacy components. 

The trade in offer is not the only motivation for people to opt for a modern system though.  The other reasons are the potential new upgrade features and Sonos products that you won’t be able to use in a legacy system. It’s those reasons that people are upset about the legacy system to begin with.  

The problem is that Sonos has yet to announce any of these “new upgrade features”. I have yet to see one I’m interested in. I never bought a Sonos One because I don’t want the additional features. They should have started by rolling out new features so that people actually want to upgrade vs trying to get people to upgrade just because they would like you to. 

This is why I say that they should have focused on finding a way to make the components interoperable and roll out new features to modern equipment without breaking their basic functionality of providing an integrated single multi-room system. Sonos has in the past been able to provide new functionality, such as airplay, only when components that support them are added so I have a hard time accepting that this is suddenly impossible. 

5 GHz WiFi isn’t an advantage for audio, except in the case of home theatre setups, which Sonos uses.  Almost  all the products Sonos currently offers has airplay 2.  I don’t get the last part of your statement as Sonos does allow you to use your equipment after they choose to stop supporting it   If that were not the case, there would be no legacy system to talk about.

My point is not audio benefit but rather more means to interact with the equipment and therefore greater likelyhood that the equipment will be usable over a longer period. 

Better DAC, Airplay 2, 12V trigger. 95% of users don't need optical out. The 5% that do can get a coaxial to optical converter for a tenner. If you think that proves your point then you are the one living in a post fact world. 

How do you know 95% of users don't need optical? Does Sonos measure this data and if so have you seen it?

Can we just agree how absurd it is to call people with 10’s of thousands of posts as “working for Sonos”?  Never mind that Sonos has stated on numerous occasions that anyone paid by Sonos is duly marked as such.  If it were truly the case that Sonos is paying people like myself to do PR on this situation, I’d be the most embedded of embedded shills ever, seeing I joined in 2008.  So either Sonos would have had to see 12 years into the future, or they would have to create a 12 year old persona and manufacture 10’s of thousands of fake posts, along with any post that quotes my posts.

Or, maybe we just disagree with you?  Nah, that makes no sense.

For the record, I don’t think any of the fanatical Sonos defenders are on the Sonos payroll, but its certainly not absurd. Sonos could easily have several user accounts that different (dozens?) employees over the years could have control of and post thousands of messages. You’d just need the log-in credentials.  Maybe writing style would be different, but it wouldn’t be the most diabolical thing that any one of us could imagine. It’s also not bonkers to imagine that some of the most avid posters have received “free” Sonos gear for their contributions to the community.

Anyway, again, I don’t think this is the case. I just think that forums like this attract some of the same personalities that inhabit sports forums. There is going to be a small fraction of very industrious posters who are zealots and entrenched in their views. I think we are seeing them on both sides of this issue.  

IMO, if a fact is stated, it does not matter who stated it.  If you’re going to makes assumptions or speculate, does it fit with the facts we already know?  It really doesn’t matter whether someone likes Sonos or not.

As well, I think when an ‘industrious poster’ actually points out negative/positive points on the other side of a discussion, it tends to be overlooked.  I’ve said several times that I think Sonos should have given more notice, and I completely understand why people are upset, particular those with big investments.   At the same time, I’ve seen people that are very frustrated admit that they do believe that are real technical issues involved here.  These posts just don’t get the same attention.

Part of that has to do with posters not wanting to spell out all the details with every post.  The poster may know exactly what’s going on but feel that a speaker that lacks future updates is useless (stretching a bit here).  They would assume readers know what they are talking about.  On the other side, posters are not wanting to always get into the unlikely but possible scenarios where legacy systems could lose partial functionality at some possible future date.  It takes time, and tends to open the discussion up to speculation on the possibility of these scenarios….again.

I made the statement in context of the previous statement...“Your devices will continue working just as they always have for a long time, there is nothing to worry about.”     It is unlikely, but possible, that a device will stop working as they always have in the near future (in contrast to ‘long time’).  Also, I was not referring to the transition of a modern device to legacy device.  I assumed ‘device’ in the italics statement was also referring to legacy devices.  Regardless, I think this goes to the argument that it’s a complicated issue that can be difficult to explain, and statements are often misunderstood.  That could be fixed by posters like me communicating better.  It also would be nice if Sonos made things less complicated.

I’ve never seen Sonos fully walk back a change before.  They do make adjustments from time to time, but never fully walk things back.  I also doubt they will here as that would mean that the change is not for technical necessity reasons as they claim it is.  So a lot of customers would likely still be upset with Sonos.  Just my guess.

As far as charging a fee to continue legacy streaming, they have stated that they will provide fixes within the limitations of the hardware to legacy systems.  So it sounds to me like they are offering it for free.  But if things changed, I don’t think we’re going to see any fee system in place for 3 main reasons.

1 - People don’t like paying a fee for something they have historically got for free.

2  - Managing a subscription fee systems has some costs to setup.  Sonos doesn’t really do that anywhere right now, so I don’t know they want build that system out for this case.

3 - The market size for people who would pay the fee will always be shrinking as people move away from Sonos or move to modern systems.

@Ryan S stated in the first post in this thread…

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.

In my opinion, you can’t claim to work to maintain the existing experience if that doesn’t mean attempts will be made to keep streaming services running, but I can see where that’s open to different interpretations.   There may be other posts where Sonos has clarified this further, but I don’t trust my memory and am not going to go hunting for it.

I took the clarification email/statement to supersede the original statement, and one of the reasons the original thread was closed while this second thread was not.  Even if it doesn’t, the two statements, on this specific issue, are not in conflict.  Sonos can make attempts to keep streaming services running within the limitations of the hardware AND there can be a point were Sonos can’t fix it and the service will no longer run.

I also think it’s worth noting that there are going to be other factors that keep a service from running on legacy systems, or modern systems for that matter.  The service provider could fold, or decide that they don’t want to work on Sonos anymore for whatever reason.  The service could change their rate structure, or decide they aren’t going to hold your personal tracks in the cloud the way they used to (like Amazon did previously).  Sirius XM recently bought Pandora, so I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Pandora absorbed into XMs service in some way (though probably still with a free version).  

I think Sonos could clarify what an ‘experience’ is, but I think they are going to avoid making any specific guarantees since they can’t control the hardware limitations or what changes streaming services are going to make.  

Sonos has set a clear expectation that the “Legacy” experience will degrade over time…  Why is this up for debate?

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4786?language=en_US

There is no ‘what if’ in the support article.  It says (many times) ‘over time functionality of features and services will be impacted’