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The Latest Sonos App Update

I have been struggling for some time to use this disastrous update to the Sonos App (Date typed 20 July 2024). It was installed on my phone and tablet automatically without any warnings nor ability to reload the old, working, app.

The app ceased to work properly on my Android tablet and phone:

  • No playlists
  • No ability to create a queue
  • Occasionally crashes
  • Loses my system every couple odf days
  • Regularly loses my library of NAS stored MP3s regularly and requires the app to be deleted and reinstalled and much else besides...

A total disaster. I have thousands of pounds invested in my collection of MP3s and now unable to reliably access them and my playlists created over many years invisible to the new app.

I can still make the system work using my windows desktop PC (I have refused to update that app.) But this is very inconvenient and a way of working I didn't sign up for it nor pay thousands of pounds for the speakers to only work this way.

Now since 19 July 2024 the app on Android starts then promptly crashes so now even the limited functionality I previously had. The Android OS puts up a message saying there is a bg in the app and I must wait for sonos to issue a new update.

What a shambles from a supposedly upmarket company. Sonos seem incapable of providing the services we have paid al lot of money for and are seemingly not doing much to sort it out.

I am disgusted with sonos and want to know when this will be fixed and how will they convince us they won’t do this again? Or should I just find the nearest waste recycling plant, dump my speakers and start again?

29 replies

C
Userlevel 6
Badge +13

Sonos? Hello?

jgatie

Sonos? Hello?

 

This is a user’s forum.  You know this is a user’s forum.  You’ve been told several times this is a user’s forum.  Why do you keep insisting that Sonos representatives should be answering individual posts in this user’s forum?

B

I have been struggling for some time to use this disastrous update to the Sonos App (Date typed 20 July 2024). It was installed on my phone and tablet automatically without any warnings nor ability to reload the old, working, app.

The app ceased to work properly on my Android tablet and phone:

  • No playlists
  • No ability to create a queue
  • Occasionally crashes
  • Loses my system every couple odf days
  • Regularly loses my library of NAS stored MP3s regularly and requires the app to be deleted and reinstalled and much else besides...

A total disaster. I have thousands of pounds invested in my collection of MP3s and now unable to reliably access them and my playlists created over many years invisible to the new app.

I can still make the system work using my windows desktop PC (I have refused to update that app.) But this is very inconvenient and a way of working I didn't sign up for it nor pay thousands of pounds for the speakers to only work this way.

Now since 19 July 2024 the app on Android starts then promptly crashes so now even the limited functionality I previously had. The Android OS puts up a message saying there is a bg in the app and I must wait for sonos to issue a new update.

What a shambles from a supposedly upmarket company. Sonos seem incapable of providing the services we have paid al lot of money for and are seemingly not doing much to sort it out.

I am disgusted with sonos and want to know when this will be fixed and how will they convince us they won’t do this again? Or should I just find the nearest waste recycling plant, dump my speakers and start again?

Could not agree more. I could not connect to my iTunes library Win 11 for all of Nov and Dec last year. After talking to 7 tech support reps and getting nowhere I was elevated to level 2. At last someone without a script in front of them who could actually think!  He went in the last direction I expected...he said I was lucky to have a Sony TV as he had a fix! I still have no idea why tweaking 3 settings in the guts of the tv would allow me to connect with my iTunes library but it did contribute to the solution and all was well till the last Sonos update...sonos lists the correct playlists but will not access any of them.

 

Really, modifying code should not be this difficult. I fear that the development group went down the subnet route years ago and have a rats nest of code they are incapable of dealing with...time for heads to roll and real talent to be hired. IMHO (after 30 years of software development).

S
Userlevel 3
Badge

Hi Everyone

 

Well, I’ve been using the 22 July 2024 update for a week now (date written 30 July 2024) and I can confirm, for me, it is a bit more stable: less app crashes. This release now regularly, first thing in the morning, reports it can’t find my system. If I stop the app and restart it then it finds the system and works all day. This happens most mornings but not all. So a moderate improvement to stability but no restoration of lost functionality. 

I (we) got, at long last, an apology from a Mr Spence the CEO of sonos. In the email Mr Spence  invited direct response to his email: ceo@sonos.com. I responded with a few questions on 26 July with: 

Hi Mr Spence

Your company has performed abysmally. I believe you have utterly trashed your brand, a brand I believed in and invested considerable amounts of money in by buying your admirable speakers.

To start to regain customer's faith and belief you need to explain how this came about, and how you will avoid these problems in the future: 

  • How such a buggy app passed internal, pre-release testing?
  • Do you have an adequate pre-release testing regime? Obviously not, so what have you done, as CEO, to overhaul your IT team?
  • Why don't you have a pre-release beta testing group who would have spared the majority of your customers all this extended grief?
  • Why did you think it acceptable to release the new app when you knew major features were missing?
  • Why didn't the update come with a warning about the missing features so we, your benighted customers, could choose rather than it being automatically updated causing utter havoc? This behaviour suggests vast arrogance by you and your organisation, why is this not true?
  • Given the bug-filled and feature-poor nature of the new app, why didn't you immediately allow reversion to the previous version of the app to allow time for you to sort out the new one without inflicting it on customers.
  • Why has it taken you so long to apologise about the situation?
  • It will be 6 months of customer pain before this is fixed, how in any universe is this acceptable behaviour by a previously highly respected company?

Bearing in mind it is always far more difficult/costly to secure new business than it is to obtain repeat business from existing customers, I now have doubts about the future of your company.

I consider it a test of you, as CEO as well as Sonos, whether or not I get a detailed response to this email. That will determine my continuing to be a Sonos customer.

 

I suppose it goes without saying that at the time of writing , 30 July, no response, only an automated acknowledgement with a load of boiler plate urging me to contact the support team. Not very encouraging although par for the course with this company. The questions I pose are not technical but those only answerable by the sonos CEO, or more likely his office, As they can’t even respond with either answers, or at least a proper acknowledgement and a date for supplying answers then that tells us all we need to know about the way this company is run.

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