The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

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.