The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

I don’t know for sure, but I would expect their systems would have updated, as the default is update automatically when you first install Sonos. They would have had to explicitly disable auto update from the App at some point.

According to things I’ve read online, Sonos shipped 5.73M units in 2023. That’s still a reasonable turnover of product and I’m sure I read that expectations for this financial year were already on track despite a predicted down turn in the final quarter? I think some here are just wishing for Sonos to fail and yet they didn’t spout praise for the company when times were good.

It seems we all find out who we can rely on when the going gets tough. I’m certainly glad I can choose my own friends. At least they know too I won’t stab them in the back when they’re down for the count.

No disrespect intended to you, @Ken_Griffiths, but it seems to me that the people with knives in their backs are the ones who woke up one morning to find their whole-house music systems – the ones they depended on for personal joy, for socializing, even for waking them up each day – suddenly inoperative. They did nothing to bring on this situation. It was, instead, the cavalier approach of SONOS towards their customers to push out a completely rewritten operating environment with inadequate testing and a list of known missing features. To take these customers to task for failing to praise SONOS in the pre-knife days is, literally, to add insult to iinjury. (Or so it seems to me.)

I don’t think that’s really accurate.  The outliers are those that are using S1. Amongst those using S2, those that are having issues with the new app is absolutely significant, but I don’t think we can clearly say whether the majority or the minority of users are having issues.  We don’t have the data, and making assumptions based on the amount of complaints we see doesn’t see anything about the number of people who aren’t having issues.

Overall, I don’t think it matters much whether 20% of users are having issues or 60% are having issues, as the number is significant either way. 

No disrespect taken, but the people you mention are ones that are down for the count. I don’t even think it’s the majority of users, but that’s another story - the knife in the back is when Sonos collapses. At the moment Sonos are spending money trying to help them get up again.

Being emotionally invested in a product one has bought is common; extending the benefit of that to a corporation seems somewhat excessive.

Exactly; I merely added to this by saying that Spence would not have come out the way he did, if the number was not highly significant to Sonos and its future. Or maybe, his future in Sonos.

I also wanted to rebut this thing that all is well at my home, I don’t see why others are having problems, suggesting that these are outliers.

You actually said that people who aren’t having issues are the outliers. Now you’re agreeing with me that the number of users  problems vs no problems is somewhere in the middle with both having significant numbers..   Are you changing your view on this now?

I was a big proponent of Sonos and I still want to be in the future. I think the great majority of people complaining were too. 

Sonos decided to release an app that never should have been released and for some reason wouldn’t pull it until it was ready even after many pleaded for the working app to be put back.

Sonos brought this on themselves.  They put the knife in their own back.

i heard 6% of the staff was laid off. I feel sorry for those employees who lost their job because of this debacle. 
I wonder, did the CEO stop taking his salary, bonuses or stock options until this is resolved?

People making noise just want their system to work as many are into Sonos for thousands of dollars.

I hope Sonos can clean this up and I can return to enjoying their products. 

Most important?  No.  Not sure why it’s a difficult question though.

There are people here in this thread @slworona and elsewhere in the community, that don’t even use the new Sonos App and are expressing views about matters, that in reality they are not even able to test for themselves. I do have to ask myself why they get involved in trying to bring down the Sonos reputation, because it’s clear that’s the only reason they’re trying to make the situation sound far worse than it likely is.

They’re looking for anything to make it appear that out of the 15 Million Sonos households mentioned, that the majority out there are having issues with their App/System. I honestly do not believe that’s the case and if you put aside the initial wave of online dissent post-May & the early App release and look at the BIG picture now, then there’s not that many users complaining here, in comparison, at an online community that has ‘always’ been regarded as the "main hospital" for Sonos users who have problems with their App/system. 

I’m not saying there are not issues with the new App, as we all know that’s still the case. We also know that the App, when launched, was released far too prematurely and no Sonos user would have supported that decision, but the App has improved and the level of complaints have also dropped around here and the expectations are, in a couple of months, the App will have hopefully got back what we all lost. The situation is a temporary one, by all accounts.

Until that time, I believe making things sound much worse than they actually are, is a case of trying to stick a knife in Sonos’ back and the backs of all the new App users too… My own thoughts are that Sonos users just want the company to get on with it, so at least some degree of normality can be restored. 

I do defend Sonos admittedly (yes I’m a fanboy), but even if I didn’t (for whatever reason), I would not want to see Sonos stabbed in the back whilst they’re down, as then we all will lose out - except perhaps those trying to shout loudest, even though some are not using the new App,  or those users who have decided to sell up and move on, but just want to put the boot in, before deciding to step out the door.

...as backed up by the post from mod Corry P last week:

“Things are improving for the majority of those affected, however, and each majority gets smaller as we progress. The biggest majority - believe it or not - are those entirely unaffected since before May.”

30m reasons why I don’t wholly believe that. If the vast majority of people were largely unaffected, why would you downgrade earnings, tell investors and delay multiple product launches in the years most important quarter. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a large number of people who once it’s setup and working, leave updates off and use their TV setup from the TV or small number of speakers direct from Spotify/Airplay. And if that makes up the majority of Sonos users these days I guess that’s fine and statistically true. The big risk is *if* these users are tempted to add to their systems before all this stuff gets fixed, then they get a big shock. I suppose only Sonos know the size of that time bomb. 

As for the more complex and long standing users, removing core parts of the service such as queue editing, multi-home switching and other functions relied on is a big reputational gamble as these users were probably the biggest advocates, and will be the most vocal detractors. 

I suspect a large number of users will search for issues, see there are lots, and if they can limp along in the meantime will avoid the lengthy support waits and just keep checking reddit etc. and update. If it’s a common issue and no obvious sign of progress, there are often better things to do than spend hours on the phone with no likely resolution. It’s a reasonable position to take. 

I also want a similar outcome @BVRBVR and I too do not like to see anyone lose their job, no matter who they work for and wish those people all the very best. A further way to stop that happening of course is to purchase Sonos products and services etc. I recommend the Ace by the way.

Anyhow I’m just as ‘miffed’ as the next user, that we lost some functionality post May 7th. In my own use-case the App has still worked here. I think I’ve demonstrated that with my posts these past few months, so I won’t bore further with attached clips/recordings showing that. 

I have not had as much cause to complain, but I have tried to help some that have encountered problems and I fully appreciate users have had a variety of different complaints including - alarms & local libraries not working, volume control lag and device discovery issues etc. I have and continue to direct some of those users to Sonos Support, as in some cases it’s not been something easy to resolve, but others I have managed to help, particularly with local library sharing/access and audio dropout issues, which are normally not App related.

For my own setup, the music has never stopped playing here and the App itself is only one method anyway to playback chosen audio to Sonos hardware (which is still great by the way) and there are plenty of other ways to do that, whether it be via Airplay, voice control, 3rd-party Apps etc.

Yes, we all want Sonos to get on with it and I’m not sure complaining loudly, particularly after all this time, is achieving anything worthwhile… Sonos ‘clearly’ know the situation (better than any of us) and what they (still) have to do to put right their decision to release the App prematurely.

My own view is to just let Sonos get on with it and not continually speculate how bad (or good) things might be. It’s not constructively achieving anything that will make the situation any better for all of us users.

@Ken_Griffiths After previous flame-war threads, I made it a point in my most recent comment to avoid any reference to you, your motivations, goals, etc. Mine are likewise irrelevant. You can agree or disagree with anything I say without questioning why I say it. As it happens, I will be better off if SONOS gets their act together and figures out how to support a large, diverse user base while expanding and upgrading their offerings. SONOS seems clearly incapable of achieving this goal at the moment and shows no signs of recognizing the need going forward. If you disagree with that assessment, feel free to say so. I won’t take it personally unless you make it personal.

I don’t see why this hard to believe.  If, for example, the number of users who are experiencing app related issues is 20%, which is not the biggest majority,  then I can see Sonos spending 30 million to fix and delaying product launch, etc.  “4 out of 5 customers are happy with our product” isn’t a good selling point.

I have no issues using the Sonos app to playing streaming music sources, grouping, volume.  I don’t use a local library (except through plex) nor use the queue functionality.  I didn’t before the app changed over either.  I realize that many people have issues with the functionality that works fine for me, but you also can’t say that Sonos only works for TV playback and Spotify direct/airplay either, as that’s just not true.

Looking back at what Patrick Spence said in his earnings call, for clarity, he didn't say they’d be spending $20-30m fixing the app - it would be the cost of investment in winning back trust:

“We are enacting programs this quarter to both support and thank our customers and partners for sticking with us through this period and turn their dissatisfaction to delight. These programs will run across Q4 and Q1. We expect these investments will come at a cost in the range of $20 million to $30 million in the short term but are necessary to right the ship for the long term.”

Further into the call, he alludes to some of this being price protection - potentially price incentives at retail. 

One thing anyone who has worked in a support role or with support teams will tell you is your clients only remember the last time you messed up and it affected them.

It doesn’t matter how much good you do in between or how out of your way you go to make sure things work, it’s when you mess up that is remembered.

Personally I don’t want to see Sonos fail, there is already a lack of companies in the streaming audio market. Sonos do need a kick up that backside though, to get them to wake up and have a serious overhaul of their products and realise the competition is either building better quality products or starting to beat them at their own game with board reuse across multiple products with faster software bug fixing and improvements.

They are in a difficult position though. Amazon & Apple have scale and supply chain, manufacturing on their side, hifi companies have consolidated under single parents so again have scale and part sharing, new companies are ODM & OEM for multiple brands as well as having their own brand based around the same core parts, so again have economy of scale on their side.

When the Amazon Echo Plus came out the difference in build quality and design compared to the Sonos Play One was on Amazons side. Not only was it custom designed, more expensive to manufacture it was still cheaper than the Sonos alternative. While Sonos was putting the single arm core board in, Amazon were using the same quad core arm chip that they use in their tablets.

The chip inside the ikea gen 1 speakers (and I’d bet gen 2), play ones, port and who knows which other products is the same single core arm chip based on a 2015 design. The HT products will likely have something more powerful due to the need to process surround audio and send to other speakers, but I bet they’re all very similar inside.

I can well believe the biggest majority of users are unaffected. In 2023 the best selling audio products by $ share according to the quarterly presentation were:

usa: One SL, Amp, Move
emea: One SL, One, Move

home theatre were

Arc, Beam, Sub

For the home theatre products if you had them setup and plugged in, you likely never need the app again.

The top streaming services are

Spotify (double the market share of Amazon + Apple if you include free users)
Amazon
Apple
Then youtube at ~ 2/3rds of Amazon/Apple

Out of the 15M households, 6M only have one product and if they’re using music streaming or a soundbar then it’s possible many of them don’t use the Sonos app other than setup. Out of the 9M multi-product households, it only averages at 4.4 products per household. Soundbar, Sub + surrounds? couple of pairs for music?

If 10% of households were affected that is still a significant number of households at 1.5 Million who will be less likely to be repeat customers, it doesn’t need to be a vast majority affected to make a cost to business of $20-30 million worthwhile if weighed up against potential loss from repeat purchase, converting existing single product household to multi-product and/or reputation damage reducing new customer sales.

Copy/paste of what Spence/CFO said to investors on Aug 7:

With the app, however, my push for speed backfired.

The app situation has become a headwind to existing product sales, and we believe our focus needs to be addressing the app ahead of everything else. This means delaying the 2 major new product releases we had planned for Q4 until our app experience meets the level of quality that we, our customers and our partners expect from Sonos.

 These programs will run across Q4 and Q1. We expect these investments will come at a cost in the range of $20 million to $30 million in the short term but are necessary to right the ship for the long term.

As Patrick mentioned, from now through the holidays, we're investing approximately $20 million to $30 million in fixing the app, supporting our customers and regaining their trust. We expect that this will come in the form of revenue and gross profit reductions as well as operating expense increases.

What this has translated to here are arguments about how bad all of the above is versus it really isn't that bad, it really isn’t actually USD 30 million in spend, what’s USD 30 million, and so on. 

As I said, what surprises me is an emotional involvement in what is just a home entertainment appliance - not a high performance sports car - expanding into an emotional investment in a greed driven corporation - as all “for profit” ones are. The Ferrari tifosi come to mind. But even those are Ferrari fans, not ones of Fiat, usually, that, along with the investing public owns 90% of Ferrari.

I am one that has not stopped praising the quality of Sonos hardware since 2020, when I got off the bandwagon of Sonos software/Sonos management.

As to not even invoking the app, the S1 in my case, I am one of those for the most part, for home audio play, because my front ends now are all Echo devices. Even NAS play in one zone where it makes more sense, is done via an occasionally loaded 5000 songs playlist, in shuffle mode. All it takes to start and stop music play is by a button press on the Connect that set up to play the playlist.

But I have had to suffer the inconvenience of keeping my phone on manual updates for all apps, to make sure that a Sonos update does not get past to the phone. 

So, does this Sonos mess affect me - it does not, except for that one inconvenience.

Does this mean I should stop posting here? I doubt that even moderators have the permission to decide on that, as long as I use civil language. And do not excessively provoke a rare commodity here these days, the Sonos apologists. I get that too, Sonos needs all such it can get together, these days.

Fix the ability to add rooms to a room currently playing without restarting the radio and listening to the same advertisements over again. Very annoying. This new version is terrible. Please roll it back to the previous. 

If you open the grouping screen, you should just be able to tick the rooms you want to add (and press Apply) and the music should just continue onward in those rooms/speakers too without interruption. Does this not happen when you do it?

Most of the time when a company like Sonos sees financial issues resulting from a disruption to “brand” it results from a competitor taking away market share.  Sonos issues with the app are self inflicted.  Any layperson who beta tested the app would know that it was destined to fail.  Assuming that beta testing did occur, Spence was unaware of the feature sets that a “majority” of Sonos users held dear. 

As the CEO is the architect of “brand” and takes on the role of caretaking and increasing “brand” awareness, he was woefully out of touch with what made Sonos a beloved brand.  Basically 3 features: 1. outstanding speakers that linked to a multi-room set up with ease 2. Access to downloads from an era before streaming became a dominant source of music 3. An app to seamlessly and easily make it all work.  

It still befuddles me that Spence was so out of touch with the “beta” testing done on this app release.  The continued delays in “fixing” the app (remember it was all going be fixed in June 24 initially) show me that the Company still doesn’t have it’s arms around the problem.  From an investor perspective, he essentially committed suicide cost investors ~40% of value. Because the brand is “loved” by many, you see such venom from disappointed users, who to this day suffer from not being able to access playlists, music library, edit cue, save playlists.  The list goes on.

Because I am invested in Sonos and do not want it to fail, a change in leadership is definitely needed.  Sooner rather than later.  IMHO they fired the wrong 10% of the workforce, regrets Patrick.  Someones head needs to roll for this, and it shouldn’t have been the worker bees.  Hire someone from AAPL who knows about creating a brand, familiar with software and firmware design and integration, and rebuild the product to the level it deserves to be at.

My experience in support and as a consumer doesn’t exactly match that, but it’s a valid point.

This entire issue is essentially because Sonos is going through a serious overhaul of their products.  The whole issue with S1/S2 was Sonos needing a new OS that wasn’t compatible with the older devices because of competition.  They have pushed to move faster because of the growing competition.  In the past, they have stated that they were too late to the game when voice assistants were introduced.    Sonos knows when their patents expire, and that big tech companies are all to eager to use them when that happens, if not sooner.

I don’t understand an argument that Sonos isn’t aware of competition.

And I do agree that competitors will use resources from other parts of their business, as well as funds from other lines of business so they can operate at lower margins, to give themselves a competitive advantage.  There is not a lot they can do about that.  And unfortunately resources are limited, they cannot always devote resources to bug fixes and product develop at the level required.  They have to set priorities, and sometimes there is no right answer.

Regarding “praise” and “blame” for SONOS…

There have been a number of comments about how people who now complain about SONOS failed to praise SONOS when times were good. It’s irrelevant who made such comments; I’m not suggesting they were wrong or that the comments were inappropriate. I just want to make a couple of general observations.

First, consider all of the people now complaining about SONOS who make a point of saying how they recommended SONOS to their friends and relatives over the years. I think even SONOS would agree that there is no form of praise more sincere. I suspect much of SONOS’ growth and success was based on word-of-mouth promotion from current owners to potential purchasers. There clearly has been no lack of praise for SONOS, either in aggregate or from those now struggling with their systems.

But now also consider the embarrassment and even feelings of guilt on the part of those who recommended SONOS to friends and relatives, friends and relatives who suddenly found their audio system inoperative. Such has been the price paid for past SONOS praise.

And so, finally, consider the likelihood of praise (which is to say recommendations) for SONOS going forward. However likely such comments might have been in the past, they will be far less frequent in the future, even from people who did not personally suffer from the May, 2024 melt-down.

Just some food for thought.