The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

More musings:

After over fifteen years of having worked for a couple of big US corporations, the landscape they play in is very familiar, and based on that there is something strange about Sonos, now a listed corporation. Every US corporation I have across has a Chairman of the Board of Directors and a CEO. Very often, and this is a source of controversy in the US, and a practice almost never followed in the EU, the same person assumes both offices; the controversy is because the Chairman is supposed to counter balance the CEO and if both offices are in one person, that is the end of the counter balance - and the entire board in such cases tends to become the plaything of the all powerful Chairman and CEO.

What is strange about Sonos, is that it has a Board of Directors, it has a CEO - Spence - who is on the Board, but there is no one named as Chairman of the Board! Search as I might, I haven't found one.

If there was a Chairman that took his job as seriously as these worthies often do, I would not be surprised if he had by now muzzled Spence so that the latter does not keep putting his foot in his mouth and destroy shareholder value even further. Or, if the situation does not look to getting back on track, he would even fire Spence; the only loyalty of a good Chairman is to shareholders, and they can be quite ruthless. 

But, there is no Chairman - also, Spence isn't designated Chairman and CEO.

Any one that finds who this missing Chairman is, kindly point him or her out via a link.

See this link that mystifies me; note that Chairmen and CEO kind of egos won’t hide that fact, and their usual designation is Chairman and CEO. Or something more grandiose.

https://investors.sonos.com/corporate-governance/default.aspx

These are actually very important questions for thread followers, that someone here ought to be able to answer in five minutes - anyone that opted for Trade Up and has a bricked unit lying around. What happens if power is applied to the unit? If it boots up, as my offline units do, are the Line in jacks then still active as they are in my case? Perhaps this will work for bricked units only If Autoplay option for the Line In was on at the time of bricking...

The answers are important because if such a unit works as a dumb device, that is solid reassurance for the rest of us here that there is nothing that Sonos can do to brick our Connect/Connect Amp/5 by any act of commission. Acts of omission like not providing updates is their hands, but if acts of commission that prevent the units from working as dumb products when supplied a signal by Line In are not doable, then it does not matter to these units if Sonos even were to go bankrupt and their servers were to go offline. 

Selecting Line In Autoplay ON for all legacy units via the controller today, and leaving it ON forever, may then be a very good precaution to take. It can't hurt, but may end up being a hardware life saver.  

Shades here of movies or shows like The Orville, where Isaac the robot suddenly drops to the floor by a central server released kill command - if I remember right, he then plots a way out by pretending to be the bad robot when unbricked, and then finds a way to go offline while still remaining functional, so the central server cannot reach him any more...he does this because he is on the side of the good guys:-)). And gals!

I don’t see why the legacy speakers have to be dumb… They’ve been streaming in sync and working fine for over a decade, so there’s no reason why they can’t handle most things - just not the new facilities. If all the non essential stuff was stripped out of the legacy build, they have even more space available.

That brings forth a thought that is close to a rant...Sonos ought to have foreseen that memory constraints would lead to a day when they will have to break their promise of having sold a multi room audio system, even while much hardware was still working. And via self discipline, they should have quarantined such memory as would be needed to keep 32mb units still able to be on the same system as 1024 mb units, albeit with lower functionality at the 32mb unit level. That would have meant that today we would have less of the fluff and eye candy, but not this break in service.

Is this too high an expectation of foresight driven self discipline? Events have answered that question, I suppose.

I have some slight concern with some of the things 'hinted' at here…

I thought the Sonos trade-up “agreement” was part of a firm undertaking to also responsibly recycle the Sonos product as part of receiving the 30% discount voucher. In fact Sonos also offer the customer a shipping label to return the goods for recycling, if there are no recycling options open to the customer in their local area. 

Would the action your proposing here Kumar risk users 'perhaps' breaking that agreement and cause them the (slight) possibility of losing their discount, or perhaps being asked to pay it back, if they continue to use their device via the line-in?… I’m not sure that it’s wise to propose such a course of action, as that surely leaves people in a slightly precarious position, and do you really want to advise people around the globe to try to keep their devices running after entering their devices into the trade-up process? At least that’s how I am reading the suggestion here and others appear to be hinting at it too.

It’s absolutely fine though, if the user chooses not to trade-up for the discount on offer. I think that should be made clear.

Just saying ..

@Ken_Griffiths :

I honestly don't give a damn about going against this “responsible recycle” stunt by Sonos which I believe to be hot air and sales promotion - full stop. There are reports in connection with the Trade Up scheme from landfill operators in the UK that were honest enough to say that all such “recycling” just ends up as bigger landfills and not as something that is actually recycled back into a new product. Doing that for plastic bags and tin cans is one thing; doing that for a Connect Amp is a completely different kettle of fish, and expensive to boot.

So, I am not hinting at anything, I am saying it in no uncertain terms. And people breaking any such agreement with Sonos are doing the planet a favour it now needs. Every drop in it helps make the ocean.

Will Sonos risk further PR disasters by even trying to proceed against someone that succeeds in using a Sonos bricked unit - even I can't see them being that stupid now.

But: there is also nothing that stops people from taking your advice either. Just saying…

All the above said, this use is not the real thing of interest to this thread, so pardon this rant, because this Sonos action has changed me overnight from evangelist to... even anti Sonos, you might say.

What is of real interest to this thread isn’t your advice or mine in connection with bricked recycled products, but what a successful test will show:  that legacy unrecycled units working in dumb mode can survive even a complete Sonos meltdown, even where their servers go offline. Will some then use this knowledge to get a 30% discount from Sonos while retaining the products or selling or gifting them? Perhaps, and if they do, it can be seen as payback for what Sonos has done to them. Again, it will be fun to see Sonos take legal action against these people. Would I do it - since the Trade up scheme is not available where I stay, this is a hypothetical question that I will not answer. 

Do I wish the meltdown fate on Sonos - No. Do I want to know how to keep my investment in Sonos viable if that happens - you bet. And it is those questions that are of interest, which you have left out while selectively capturing what I have said in your quote.

Further to the above, a Sonos with a long term vision for a better future for its customers, the environment and consequently itself may even change the 30% scheme to legitimise what I have said people may do with legacy products.

Yes, that will get under the skin of those that sent their products to a landfill for the 30%, but that can be considered a trivial issue if the principle of sunk costs is understood and applied by them to this situation. 

By dumb I was thinking more along the lines as in if the speaker can't do the required task like syncing with a stream involving modern gear, the box handles the smart part and the speaker just receives the stream.  I agree you wouldn't want the legacy systems to lose any of their current functionality.  I guess dumb speakers is not the appropriate term for this.

I would also be curious to understand how the line in feature works just without network connectivy.  While I don't believe sonos would forcibly brick a unit against a customers will, I do wonder if a connect amp could be run as a dumb amp without being part of the sonos network.  Not that it would be my choice but if things got to a really negative point with sonos, could you hook up a pair of passive speakers to the connect amp, remove sonos software from your system and then hook up an echo dot to the line in and still have a decent quality non sonos stereo.  My guess would be no, but even something like that might help those with legacy connect amps not feel like their amps are garbage.  I don't own a connect amp but I wonder if this could be tested by just turning off WiFi to the house for a few minutes and then plugging a phone or CD player into the line in port.  Could test with a play 5 as well I guess but I don't have one of those either.  It may help prove whether a connection to sonos software is required for even it most basic function.