Here’s my feedback to your senior team: I’ve been a UK customer since ~2008 but this is the sour cherry on an increasingly stale cake. I’m done.
I don’t know if it’s common in the UK to say “this is the sour cherry on an increasingly stale cake,” but I love the phrase.
Please provide a way to rollback to a previous version of the app for iOS.
Custom Radio URL is a missing feature too! I can’t live without it.
Roll it back and start again.
What about showing volume number when using single room.
I don't understand why you couldn't wait till June to release the app and have some sort of feature parity with the S2.
Was it the earnings call on 7th may that required this half baked mess to be shipped with zero regard for customer experience?
There is one more thing I don’t get about this Sonos insanity. Such actions are taken in the face of existential threats.
Sonos is now just one more brand of sliced bread, but I don’t see any such threat to them.
For instance, they were completely blindsided in about 2016 by voice controlled Echos and went into panic mode, dismissing developers en masse as part of the corporate response to the explosive growth in Echo sales, which was seen as an existential threat to Sonos.
What’s that kind of threat now, I wonder...
“Local music library search and playback: mid-June”
So you have removed an absolutely essential feature that is the main use case for many users, and plan to bring it back after more than a month?
This is completely unacceptable.
An equivalent action by, for example Tesla, would be if an OTA suddenly and without warning removed the ability to drive on certain types of roads. “Sorry, you can’t drive on motorways with the version we just rolled out. Our plan is to bring back motorway driving in mid-June”. This would of course be ridiculous.
Me, I am just playing music in my kitchen and living room, but I wonder how many formal parties and other occasions, some of them commercial enterprises, just had their music entertainment arrangements upended, potentially costing them real money.
I hope you change your plans to fix this much quicker.
Me, I am just playing music in my kitchen and living room, but I wonder how many formal parties and other occasions, some of them commercial enterprises, just had their music entertainment arrangements upended, potentially costing them real money.
Businesses have a Sonos Pro option: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/sonos-pro. If music/speakers are an important part of their business/premises I’d imagine they’d be using this rather than the home user app/service. Even if using the regular/home service, I can’t imagine it would be extremely problematic to just keep using the Windows/Mac desktop app for a while and wouldn’t be surprised if most businesses use computers/laptops rather than phones/tablets anyway.
I’m disappointed by missing features too. My point here is just that I doubt the current situation is going to have a critical impact on business users.
We set out to create a more personalized and effortless listening experience with the updated Sonos app. It was rebuilt from the ground up to ensure it could support future innovation in the years to come. For its initial rollout, we focused on how we could answer some of the most common requests from our customers, including increased reliability, performance, and faster access to music.
Many of you have shared valuable feedback on both the improvements that have made your experience better, as well as the areas where we fell short. We are listening to all of your comments and working to address them as quickly as possible. Over the coming weeks, we will reintroduce the below features, while fixing bugs and performance issues. Thank you for your engagement and we look forward to building upon this first step to create a listening experience that meets everyone’s needs.
- Screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
- Adding and editing alarms: May 21
- Adding to queue and playing next: early June
- Sleep timer: mid-June
- Local music library search and playback: mid-June
- Update Wi-Fi settings: mid-June
I’m so glad that Sonos took care of my personal entertainment life by releasing this piece of Sh!$ App Version!
I won’t be inviting any friends, family or neighbors over any time soon based on your timeline. You’ve wiped out my calendar due to embarrassment. Don’t want to have to explain this crap and feel like a hypocrite with my choice for sound, ease of use or financial investment.
Imagine this scenario. Flipping burgers on a grill on a nice sunny day, with everyone over listening to some favorite tunes. All your invested Sonos products are finally playing grouped together throughout the house, inside and outside around the pool. And someone comes over to request an addition to be queued or wishes to contribute their own choice of music or station that they would love to contribute to the mood.
Sonos mgmt., can you visualize it yet?
Once your customer base is tarnished, it’s hard to get them back!
A Word to the wise and your financial pockets 🤬
Good luck with your recovery path chosen.
Hi Keith. I’m sorry you are having a rough day.
I would like to share that this response makes me feel even angrier, because you have continued to justify your actions and clarify when the things you broke will be fixed. What you did not say is “I am sorry”.
I wrote previously that In order for you to begin to recover from what you have done, if it is even possible, you should start by imagining a similar situation with other daily appliances. Your appliance company calls you and says “we have a small routine update we need to make to your home appliances, we can apply the fix remotely. We’ll come by tonight”.
You come home and the the dishwasher looks the same, but doesn’t actually wash dishes correctly anymore, it is missing the cycles you use every day, and no longer has a timer function so it can run at night. Your family don’t know how to operate it and it is messing up your home routines and schedules. The oven only now cooks with some of the modes, and has completely removed the timer feature you use every day to cook meals with your family. The refrigerator / freezer temperatures are wrong, you can’t change them, and you are spoiling food and the freezer is thawing and no longer makes ice. When you call to find out what is going on, you are told how great the new experience is. That this was deliberate. There is no way to go back, but that these features will probably come back in the coming months. Until then, there is nothing you can do about it - although feel free to post on our support forums.
Now ask yourself “How would I personally feel if someone did this to me, in my own home, with my own things, without my consent, and then refuses to immediately fix it?”
If you are like most people, you will probably find yourself saying “I would be very angry. I would want the people that did that to be very sorry, to really mean it, for them to fix it and make amends if they could. Even still, I’d want for there to be consequences.”
To be clear, this is far far worse than the S1/S2 debacle. People had time to react, and so you were able to recover - but it made your long time customers doubt you. Unfortunately, Patrick already promised that you wouldn’t do anything like it again. He said “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.” You broke your promise.
I am going to hope that this is not a mortal self-inflicted wound to your company. It may be, depending on each of your ability to accept responsibility what you did, for how you behaved after the harm was evident, and what you do now.
THIS. 100% THIS.
Hey, Keith? Give us the S2 app back. How many versions of this request must you see before Sonos do the right thing? Put this new garbage straight in the bin where it has always belonged.
Promises made. Promises and trust broken.
Revert to the prior app version. Today. This is a simple push/fix. Admit your abject failure and fix this.
We set out to create a more personalized and effortless listening experience with the updated Sonos app. It was rebuilt from the ground up to ensure it could support future innovation in the years to come. For its initial rollout, we focused on how we could answer some of the most common requests from our customers, including increased reliability, performance, and faster access to music.
Many of you have shared valuable feedback on both the improvements that have made your experience better, as well as the areas where we fell short. We are listening to all of your comments and working to address them as quickly as possible. Over the coming weeks, we will reintroduce the below features, while fixing bugs and performance issues. Thank you for your engagement and we look forward to building upon this first step to create a listening experience that meets everyone’s needs.
- Screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
- Adding and editing alarms: May 21
- Adding to queue and playing next: early June
- Sleep timer: mid-June
- Local music library search and playback: mid-June
- Update Wi-Fi settings: mid-June
…and you failed completely. you can discuss about the ui but not about missing or cutting key features and functionality. I m about 25y in software dev and sys admin - when we would release such an alpha version / „upgrade“ in my international corp - we would be fired immediately - and that is the truth. we also dev on iOS and android for customers - I know what I m talking about. We have about 1300 it employees and in total about 40.000 employees (only Germany). you failed terribly and can t make a honest statement about - that s the reality.
also not being able to rollback as long as things turned out / fixed is a joke.
We set out to create a more personalized and effortless listening experience with the updated Sonos app. It was rebuilt from the ground up to ensure it could support future innovation in the years to come. For its initial rollout, we focused on how we could answer some of the most common requests from our customers, including increased reliability, performance, and faster access to music.
Many of you have shared valuable feedback on both the improvements that have made your experience better, as well as the areas where we fell short. We are listening to all of your comments and working to address them as quickly as possible. Over the coming weeks, we will reintroduce the below features, while fixing bugs and performance issues. Thank you for your engagement and we look forward to building upon this first step to create a listening experience that meets everyone’s needs.
- Screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
- Adding and editing alarms: May 21
- Adding to queue and playing next: early June
- Sleep timer: mid-June
- Local music library search and playback: mid-June
- Update Wi-Fi settings: mid-June
I would make sense if you build, test, verify and only then launch...
This is completly misuse of your clients, unless you only look for new customers
There is a timeline for reintroducing most of the missing features, it’s only a matter of weeks. Along with those features there will be bug fixes that come with them.
This doesn’t address everybody wants, that’s clear. But it addresses most of the bigger asks, and in a relatively short time scale. It’s clear an official path back to the old v16 app isn’t coming, as their future plans / product launches are too dependant on the new app.
There is a timeline for reintroducing most of the missing features, it’s only a matter of weeks. Along with those features there will be bug fixes that come with them.
This doesn’t address everybody wants, that’s clear. But it addresses most of the bigger asks, and in a relatively short time scale. It’s clear an official path back to the old v16 app isn’t coming, as their future plans / product launches are too dependant on the new app.
Again, they are looking more to atract new customers than to please the existing clients
There is a timeline for reintroducing most of the missing features, it’s only a matter of weeks. Along with those features there will be bug fixes that come with them.
This doesn’t address everybody wants, that’s clear. But it addresses most of the bigger asks, and in a relatively short time scale. It’s clear an official path back to the old v16 app isn’t coming, as their future plans / product launches are too dependant on the new app.
Again, they are looking more to atract new customers than to please the existing clients
well yes, commercially they have to. Of course they have to — you could not expect otherwise from any company. New customers generate revenue. Old customers don’t.
But they are retaining local libraries and reintroducing local library search. This, despite those customers with local libraries being an ever decreasing proportion of their customer base. I would say they are trying to attract new customers, while trying to stay relevant to existing customers.
The arrogance of Sonos (hopefully not you Keith) is unbelievable. I have thousands of pounds of product thay you have made more difficult to use.
Where is the apology?
The sensible thing to do is role back to the previous version and then when you have properly tested the new version role it out again. If you had any customer satisfaction ethic at the organisation you'd have done thay already.
Waiting weeks for things thay should be a given (Access to favourites, adding a song to a play list etc., etc.) would not be acceptable to most businesses.
- Screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
- Adding and editing alarms: May 21
- Adding to queue and playing next: early June
- Sleep timer: mid-June
- Local music library search and playback: mid-June
- Update Wi-Fi settings: mid-June
Note to app developers, don’t redesign an app in this fashion, you might be labeled amateurish.
well yes, commercially they have to. Of course they have to — you could not expect otherwise from any company. New customers generate revenue. Old customers don’t.
True, but also consider this statement by CEO Spence a couple of years ago: The customer is entitled to app/speaker updates, they are not free; he/she paid for them in the price paid at the time they bought the device.
App updates obviously mean ones that work. On record therefore Spence has reaffirmed a commercial commitment to existing customers beyond just a moral one. Sonos, on the admittance of the CEO, has collected and recorded revenue for services to be delivered for years ahead, from old customers.
We set out to create a more personalized and effortless listening experience with the updated Sonos app. It was rebuilt from the ground up to ensure it could support future innovation in the years to come. For its initial rollout, we focused on how we could answer some of the most common requests from our customers, including increased reliability, performance, and faster access to music.
Many of you have shared valuable feedback on both the improvements that have made your experience better, as well as the areas where we fell short. We are listening to all of your comments and working to address them as quickly as possible. Over the coming weeks, we will reintroduce the below features, while fixing bugs and performance issues. Thank you for your engagement and we look forward to building upon this first step to create a listening experience that meets everyone’s needs.
- Screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
- Adding and editing alarms: May 21
- Adding to queue and playing next: early June
- Sleep timer: mid-June
- Local music library search and playback: mid-June
- Update Wi-Fi settings: mid-June
Create poor listening experience with sonos new CRapp
This is a company with a previous PR disaster behind it which makes this all totally incomprehensible. Following the attempt a few years ago to make customer’s older equipment obsolete overnight and the S1 / S2 divide, this current release of a pile of tosh, seemingly for the sake of imminent upcoming products to the detriment of existing users, makes it abundantly clear to me that Sonos doesn't give a hoot about its customers. I now have an unusable system (used mainly for radio through custom urls and a large personal library, both of which are no longer functional) whilst Sonos again tries to right its wrongs. It is not me that should be waiting for functionality to come back (if indeed it really does). Some real world beta testing should have been undertaken and the app / new products held back until properly working. If Sonos doesn't care about me then please dont expect me to care about upcoming products or anticipate my future custom. This did not “take courage”, it took crass stupidity and incompetence at the risk of brand suicide. For that, the app team should be dismissed / replaced and the ceo stand down to let someone with some customer care skills take the company forward.
My comments on the new app for all its worth….
not at all intuitive and hard to find my way around. Basic functionality (eg EQ settings) hidden away
poor layout. Often find myself in a screen i cant get out of, the most common of which is “sorry, something went wrong”
bring back a number for an indication of volume and Roam charge status
the volume slider isnt useable as the volume doesn't increase/ decrease in line with input and moves randomly to super quiet or, worse, super loud - I fear it could ultimately blow a speaker
no search function for personal library. How this could be removed and think it doesn't matter is unbelievable and displays the thinking ability of a 2 year old. I have hundreds of artists / thousands of albums / tens of thousands of tracks. There isn’t even a slider to search by first letter
no ability to insert items into a queue
etc etc as others have commented
- Screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
- Adding and editing alarms: May 21
- Adding to queue and playing next: early June
- Sleep timer: mid-June
- Local music library search and playback: mid-June
- Update Wi-Fi settings: mid-June
Note to app developers, don’t redesign an app in this fashion, you might be labeled amateurish.
Why dont give us option to revert while you are fixing the crap?
Very close to binning the whole lot. Why not run 2 apps in tandem as previously suggested instead of imposing this half cocked barely usable mess you've given us no.
I can’t understand how a market dominator company as Sonos can release such crap. I wonder, do the Sonos executives use their own products? Or do they use more exclusive stuff as Naim and such.
The interface is a nightmare. I can’t chose one of my players, there will be two selected and the playlist (which I added with a Lenovo tablet running the old app) disappears and as most of you know, there is no way to play your own playlists anymore.
Sleep timer is something I use every night. How could they just ignore it?
Search seems to work randomly or not at all.
I wish I made as much money as the Sonos executives, I would by an expensive system which plays real high resolution files and their app is user-friendly.
As a former software CEO who led development of much more complex systems than Sonos, I see all the signs of failed agile development and agile management methodology.
The decision to ship broken software (suspiciously timed to coincide with a quarterly earnings announcement and product launches) shows a senior mgmt team that is disconnected from the software development work. And, the decision to commit to delivery dates for several missing features will likely inflame the existing issues.
The lack of an apology is clearly the result of meddling from Sonos legal, as any admission of mistakes would create exposure for the likely class action lawsuits that may be inbound shortly.
I suspect the old S2 app had mounting technical debt issues and the decision was made to “rip the band aid off” and re architect the solution, with much of the resource investment going towards underlying infrastructure… that most users won’t care about. This could be a good decision long term, but it shows that mismanagement of the platform was happening long before last week.
I’ve “been there” in my career after a failed product reboot of a platform that was “mission critical” for a large user community. I can tell everyone from my own hard-earned experience that the solution is NOT to allow lawyers to craft external messaging, or for execs to run the release roadmap via executive fiat while forcing dev teams to commit to deployment dates of upcoming features in a time of intense user dissatisfaction.
I predict it’s going to be a VERY bumpy ride for all of us who use our Sonos systems.
