oh by the way this is the answer you need to design into your software or at least tell everyone who has the 913 issue.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjhKhDuvgDY

This is pretty much a rhetorical question, but when is Sonos actually going to fix all of the problems in the app???  I am so frustrated.  I get random problems - they are the ones that are identified as being screwed up by the bad update. So I just wait for them to be fixed?

@Lexi11201 

Yes, imo patience and waiting for the next updates is the best way. What else could you do…? Sell all your devices and get frustrated? I wouldn’t choose option two speaking for myself.

So on top of the app update removing my music library and working out how to give Sonos permission to see music folders on the Mac  I also had to reboot both speakers ( one and Beam), and do the long winded full deregister Alexa, Amazon and Sonos skill( it’s not a skill is it more like a one star pia ) etc etc etc. I bought the one so I could use Alexa. This fails so many times it’s not true and the app update forcing me to spend around 40 mins doing this long winded delete, reinstall etc etc as per Sonos instructions is making the family pretty upset. You get used to something then for reasons unknown it breaks. The reset still doesn’t allow Alexa to kill the sound on the one/ Beam so I still have to kill it by tapping on the speakers anyway. It’s clear this is still a huge mess and after waiting 25 mins ( the Sonos bot said 10mins) on customer support I gave up. None of this should be this difficult. Period. It’s starting to loose a lot of the shine. 
 

if anyone is really listening , or interested at Sonos what’s the plan from here on in?  Stock still heading south, products delayed, Chief product officer bailing out his stock options last month, .. 

Actually I’m about to do exactly that, I’m fed up with Sonos not supporting their products and forced deprecation, ridiculous carry on for such expensive speakers. MusicCast here I come!

i’m going to get rid of my 20+ Sonos devices. they are useless pieces of s**** at the moment.

i hate what Sonos management have done to a wonderful product. 

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

Serious question. Why would anyone buy a Sonos product now? Answer, they’re not. Despite the deluded belief that releasing headphones will distract people from their app disaster, their share price gives you the most accurate picture. Down nearly 40% since the release of the new app. 
 

I, like so many in this forum have bought and recommended Sonos for more than 12 years. I’m embarassed when so many ask me “ what happened to Sonos?”

The more I continue to try and use the app, the more I am completely stunned at just how appallingly the upgrade and post release has been managed.

I have zero faith this will ever be anywhere as useable as it was, let alone better. To somehow believe that things like alarms are the most critical issue is laughable. The bugs in the volume and speaker management alone should be the first priority.

I like many are waiting for other companies to seize what is an extraordinary opportunity to provide disenchanted Sonos owners with better alternative options, and/ buy the carcass of the company, sack the key people behind the upgrade and make it the once great product it was again.

The new app STILL SUCKS. Shame on you Sonos. You’ve killed a 10 year relationship and there is no coming back from this.

With the last updates of the Sonos app in the Apple App Store, the basic use of the app becomes less intuitive, less responsive and in general harder to use (like having to login over and over again). You can find the details in the App Reviews in the App Store.

These reviews are killing for a couple of months now, basically since that one update that started the general downgrade of the app.

Lots of one and two star rates and all similar feedback. However, no replies in the App Store. Here in this forum, I see similar issues expressed, including “please go back to previous version”, both added recently and a few months ago.

Yet, when I look at your public trello board (great initiative btw), I can't find anything that gives me the impression you do anything with this feedback.

What’s the point of showing your plans to the public if you don't listen to that same public?

Do you actually take the user-feedback serious? Or is this all just a marketing-thingy?

I'm also not a fan of some of the GUI choices Sonos had made on the new app, but I have not found it getting (even) less intuitive in recnet updates. Can you give an example of this?

It’s astonishing that we’re 5months on from when this disastrous App refresh was released and there hasn’t been a real solution put on the table to recapture the excitement and faith of the customer population.  It’s all patchwork.  This is just stubborness and counterproductive. People buy new systems bc they see and hear the sound quality coming out of speakers… so they are being hoodwinked bc they get home and set everything up only to find that it’s completely unreliable bc the software is substandard.  This lagging realization is why the revenues haven’t slumped as much as the stock price… but that reputational wave is coming, bc the hardware might be good, but the software is wretched.

So let’s talk about how to solve this:

1. You can’t solve complexity head on. Release a stripped down player that is rock solid stable, that doesn’t skip or have latency lags, or make speakers disappear randomly… just get us back in the game playing our music with solid and immediate control fidelity, a simple queue, reliable service hooks, and get it playing without interruptions.  Go back to the basics.  you guys got way ahead of yourselves with useless UX “features” and tricks with advert insertion in the streams… something didn’t work right (obviously) and now we all see it’s a complex tangled mess that makes our volume controls flaky, makes our music libraries, services and speakers disappear, makes the tunes stop randomly… Strip it down and get us back playing our music without so much friction-- and the vitriol and hate for the company will start to heal.
2. Use an architecture that is truly microservices and loosely coupled components.  My guess is you guys strayed from this basic principle of building complex systems.  If you’ve tangled too many features in one component or microservice, then you can’t isolate and turn off the problem code and fix it independently. So we’re back to step 1: Start with basic core functionality, test and simplify until rock solid.  Then add back incremental functionality and battle test again.  Release a simple stable player.  The fact that you guys are taking 5mos to resolve this suggests you’re too tangled in a successor update app that is still way to monolithic.
3. Set up at least two independent solve teams. Go back to the last reliable version of the app, and let at least two different power teams innovate different fork solutions.  Let your best people do their best work unimpeded.  Clearly what happened here is Engineering got marginalized. Zero doubt that the best Engineers in the house knew this version of the app would be garbage, but they were overruled and silenced.  
4. Sonos makes money from selling hardware, not software.  So create a gateway and DRM setup that allows you to open up the ecosystem so the world out here can build our own software components (reliably!) and offer them to the Sonos community in an App Catalog.  My guess is the community is capable of producing better software than Sonos is. The gateway can require an advert stream and a secret key credential which approach is easy enough for you guys to build, and if the SDK is done right with components and libraries, then people can build their own controllers.  It is sufficiently complex enough that it becomes a filter in its own right, and ends up getting you a way to import good ideas and robust engineering from outside the company, while allowing the installed base to opt out of bad Management decisions that interfere in our lives in a way that really pisses people off.  Messing with music is messing with people’s lives and they don’t like it.  So let the installed base participate in resolving things in alternative ways… and Sonos can transition to being a company that offers components and services, and not a straightjacket walled garden.

what the f*** is this garbage ass app update that was foisted upon us?  there’s not even any way to select the actively playing device without grouping it with whatever device was previously selected. 

i’ve spent probably close to $10k with y’all over the years, but you f***ed up big time and you assuredly lost my future business.  it’s been this way for months now. what the hell is wrong with your product team that you didn’t just roll back your s***ty app update?

hey sonos?  maybe don’t force product updates when they suck. it should be glaringly obvious that your “improved experience” is anything but when the first thing you hear upon calling Support is an announcement that updates to fix customer complaints about the “experience” are “coming soon”.  y’all suck.

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

hot take:  it sucks 

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

Like almost everyone else here I think the whole new app situation is a disaster, bad to the point of making me cringe when I use it, however, just a ray of happiness, I have 8 or so devices in my house that all suffer from the shocking app controlled by by android phones at home, but in my office I have a pair of IKEA shelf speakers that work perfectly from the good old Sonos PC desktop app.

It's a joy to get to work and chuck on whatever music I want, stop start instantly, turn up or the volume at will without wanting to cry at the delay.  Ahh, just like the good old days, thanks for the memories Sonos. X xx 

As a retired IT exec for a wall Street bank I have been responsible for very many beta tests of new software.  The very first thing you do is to test the backup/back out plan well before you implement.  Why wasn’t this defective release immediately backed out so that corrections could be made?  I’m sure that Sonos has competent software developers, but their management is clearly a different story.

It all makes me think that Sonos are heading towards the ‘holy grail’ of monthly revenue. Following the path of Microsoft, Apple etc etc. Switch off any of the customer’s own resources and charge for access that Sonos will provide, perhaps as a third party supplier to Spotify etc etc. Once everyone has all the speakers they need how else will their business grow?

The new app is bad and doesn't work properly.it takes longer to load than the old one and there are constant error messages....It's annoying.

Started buying Sonos almost 20 years ago. I have 10 or 11 Sonos products in my house. I have given several Sonos speakers to each of my four children. I have given a pair of Sonos speakers to many of my nieces and nephews as graduation presents. That’s because I used to love Sonos. Now I hate Sonos. It has gone from great to absolutely terrible. Every time I go to use it there is some kind of problem requiring me to do a half hour, an hour, sometimes a day of research and work to restore things. I will never, ever, ever, ever buy another Sonos product or recommend it to anyone. I will tell anyone I can to stay away from this POS. 

Yeah completely agree. In a very similar situation myself. I just don’t bother with it anymore and use my headphones. Will be selling all my Sonos kit, except the beam as thank god it works without the app. 

Me too - I’ve started telling friends who are interested to avoid Sonos and I’ve started selling my Sonos products in favour of HomePods. I’ll never touch another Sonos product again. Sonos was stupid and now they are reaping the consequences - I wish it weren't so but, hey… I think its important to note that Sonos has had quality issues for a decade and that my reaction is largely a reflection of accumulated frustration - as the other posted note, getting Sonos to work is a daily chore - Sonos doesn’t “just work” (neither does Apple unfortunately) - it requires constant babysitting and intervention. There are too many friction points. And if it's true that Sonos management was warned then they got the results of their decision - apparently their stock has fallen by 30%…. I hope that gets the Sonos Board’s attention! This could've gone differently. Anyway, my frustration with Sonos is now over - all that remains is selling my remaining 6 speakers and then I’m done. I will never ever use Sonos again. 

I am still hoping it would improve. I just can not believe that they will not be able to fix it. Luckily, I still have my Desktop with Windows, where Sonos works as before.

It is really really sad, how such a great product and company has been destroyed with such an unprofessional release because of the new headphones they wanted to make a marketing platform. 

The management that deceided that release, has destroyed a whole company with one untested release.

Shame on you

I cannot access the majority of my playlists!! I have been paying for the premium (laughable now) service for years and now to have no access to the majority of my music is unacceptable. Time to sell up and move on to better providers.

I see what you mean. I am sure they will be able to fix it eventually however for me the frustration has hit a limit. I highly regret not moving off from the Sonos platform after the s2 release bricked a ton of kit. Only a matter of time before that cycle repeats. When a company shows you who they are, believe them. Trying to make speakers into a consumable item is really quite shameful in my opinion. Less said about the ‘recycling mode’ the better as well. 

Mistake , bug is not a issue it happen all the time,for any app. This new release is not a bug, it does works at ALL.

It just show how careless the sonos management team treat their customers. They don’t really care how the user suffered on their service at all.

I confirm that the story is the same I have products are scattered in more houses I am furious with the service and non-existent technical support....In ITALY if you break a part they make the replacement with a repaired one at a price almost equal to new. Since I had this misadventure I started to buy something else and I am much more satisfied with the sound and management works of my new devices SONOS NEVER AGAIN!!! no value for the price paid the application and painful I would say it sucks... I wish him the same frustration that he has provided to his customers for the last 5 years