I purchased the Play5 in 2014 and now it is obsolete?? And you are offering 30% off to replace/upgrade?  That is just not acceptable.  I bought a Playbase in 2017 and have brought multiple other family members on board with the Sonos family.  30% is not good enough.  Sonos will have to do better.  Can’t tell you how outraged I am with this “Legacy Program…...”   Grrrrrr….

Sam, 

It is only updates to the software that will stop. For now, your system will continue to work as it always has. Your only issue would be in the remote chance that if Spotify were to make any changes on their end, your system *might* stop streaming Spotify. 

I realize that Sonos is saying that the legacy hardware “may” continue to work for a while.  I think they are thinking people will upgrade and forget.  I was trying to build out my system as I could afford over time.  Sure wrecks that plan. I will have to find a new solution eventually,

Apple offered you how much on the trade up of your last phone? Oh...Wait….

Apple did not offer a penny for my iPhone 5 - but then again, Sonos is NOT Apple.  And my iPhone 5 was for making phone calls - which it still does exceptionally well.

cough
https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/12/technology/apple-iphone-slow-battery-lawsuit/index.html
cough

Shocked.  The fact ALL Sonos products must be current in order to update is outrageous, as well.

What a foolish choice Sonos is making for me.

 They are saying it may work because they have no control over when or if streaming services change how there services work.  They mean to say that they won’t change the legacy code at that point...or they may if the change isn’t too extensive...I’m a little unsure on that point.  

For a point of reference there have been customers who stopped updating their software versions a couple years ago, and have reported back recently that there system is working fine.

As far as your plan, I think there is a limit as to long of a period you can build out any whole home audio system.  There is always hardware failure to consider of course.   More importantly, no company is going to support their software/firmware in a device indefinitely.  Perhaps the best strategy is a system that separates hardware and software as much as possible.  By that I mean using ‘dumb’ speakers that have little or no software/firware involved, like your traditional passive speakers and amps paired with a cheaper smart source of content that can be easily updated in time.  Of course, that doesn’t give you a multiroom system 

It’s not an apples to apples comparison.  Phones and multiroom audio systems are different things.  It might be better to compare Apples Homepod to Sonos, in 5 or so years.  It’s a guess, but I don’t think Apple will have any new products that work with Homepod and will only be providing minimal support.

Also worth noting that, Apple being a tech giant, can afford to take loses with their smart speakers because they have other lines of business to suppliant it.  Sonos obviously does not.  Not exact equal players in the market.

Cheaper to cut my losses on the 3 x Sonos 5s and Sonos connect that I purchased some 8 years ago at a cost of £2000 plus & buy another manufacturers system e.g Bose. Why would I take the chance of upgrading these at a cost of £1300 approx when Sonos could do exactly the same thing in a few more years time! Ludicrous and very poor support from Sonos for all the support and recommendations we’ve shown in their products, I feel like an idiot now, money down the drain!

Do you know Bose recently abandoned their entire multi-room speaker lineup, including units sold up to the very day they abandoned them, and the new models are completely incompatible with the old? 

I do not own 13 iPhones that need to be upgraded. With 4 months notice.

I don’t really care what Bose do.

i spoke to Sonos today who had a half hour wait due to calls on this issue. They are endeavouring you find a solution to the problem of having two differing software upgrades enabling multiple Sonos items playing the same stream.  They did not mention this in the mail they sent out.

i believe they have had some serious feedback from early adopters and Sonos advocates feeling let down.

if we keep up the feedback they may come up with a solution. I believe they may have misread the sentiment and the willingness to upgrade to new Sonos equipment in the short term due to the previous investments.

Misreading that would take epic levels of willful ignorance since they have the data and can do the math. It can't be a surprise that quite a few people would be facing thousands of dollars in replacement costs.

This is quite unacceptable. I understand that the Bridge connecting to the router might be obsolete but how can the receiving Connect amplifiers?

This is quite a betrayal to loyal users considering that even with your trade in the new devices are sometimes twice as expensive for no significant improvement. 

I don’t need speakers that are Alexa portals. What nonsense. 

I think the manner in which Sonos owners were advised of this is disgraceful. I am currently invested in the Sonos ecosystem and have introduced family members too. But if I have to replace my kit, it will not be with Sonos products as I have no guarantee that they will not do exactly the same in 5 years time. 

I replaced my Bridges with Boosts with out any upgrade benefit because Sonos told me that they would improve reliability and throughput. 

I honestly don’t see how upgrading the Connect amps will make any difference. They are receivers and nothing more and if I am streaming my own music through the Boost I can’t see how it will matter. 

Now if they update the Boost to not communicate with anything but newer products then I think we have a class action suit. 

You are not “streaming through the Boost” except that the Boost is a network device that passes data.  All the speaker smarts - streaming logic, service account info, codec processing, DRM decoding, favorites, playlists, track index, now playing info, queue info, voice control logic, Airplay 2, etc. are on the Sonos players themselves. 

In fact, the Boost really does nothing except bridge Sonosnet to your router (hence the low cost) 

Good to know. Thank you. So that means it will be a real issue in the future regardless. 

Well the most recent devices have significantly more RAM and storage than the legacy devices (32 MB vs 256 MB).  RAM and SD cards are far cheaper today than in 2005.  

There is NO reason why new products cannot play musics through the old system. They are basically  Bluetooth speakers and should be able to link to new products. This is just a plan to make money and coerce us to buy new products. I resent it and if they ever fail to work like they always have we will replace the whole system with a new product. And to think I was about to buy a new speaker. Not now. 

I have bought 8 Sonos products.  I am hesitant to ever buy another.  First you stopped the ability to play music stored on my Ipad...that was like a slap in the face telling the customer we don’t really give a shit about you. Now you come out with this nonsense that you will not update the Amp I bought (It isn’t eve that old!).  Music systems are not like smartphones.  We expect them to last forever.  My old Yamaha Receiver still works great and it is 25 years old.  Yamaha did not disown me.  

I am glad that you changed your mind about the support for the Amp.  But this has definitely left a bad taste in my mouth about Sonos.  

I was thinking of building on my system and getting a Playbar, to use with my other Sonos speakers....but no longer.  I cannot trust that you will keep the value of what I buy.  

I feel the same - rather let down. 

I’ve bought SONOS from the very start and built up quite a collection of bits of kit and convinced many friends to go the same way too.

I can fully understand that, as time goes by, providing support for streaming services to a huge and growing community is expensive and I’d be fully prepared to contribute to this by a monthly subscription.

I’m sorry, but I am deeply unimpressed by the offer of ‘30% discount trade in’ for a perfectly working piece of superb hardware - in this age of concern about global warming then instigating such a replacement scheme clearly flies in the face of trying address this issue.

I don’t want SONOS to go under as I have a loyalty to the brand. BUT, this has stretched it. How about a subscription scheme for supporting products after ‘X’ years - problem i guess is what competitors are going to do on this front - although if it was a small enough amount then i suspect it wouldn’t put purchasers off.

I feel like Sonos has abandoned me 

Whoever reads this, you could have it as bad as me- 8 Sonos connects and 3 amps purchased 2014 now all outdated 

what will I do now?

in seriously considering changing over to Bluesound controllers since the sound is rated better anyway

a few days later I am still stunned 

Why not just continue to use the Sonos you have? They aren’t going to stop working any time soon and when they do start to have issues it may be nothing you care about or Sonos may have a work-around you can use.