I have seen the firestorm break out in 2020 over S2 and a bigger one now over the May 24 App.
My view, for someone to take forward inside Sonos in any way that makes sense. If it makes sense.
Sonos hardware is neutral to what it plays. It will serve just as well for Apple Music as it will for Spotify. Or for radio stations. Or even, let us remember, for local libraries on a NAS. Obviously this is the sensible thing to do, as compared to offering hardware that only plays music via Sonos; letting users choose from providers that do music services best, is the approach that has worked very well till now.
Why can the same thinking not guide how the app works? I will take a simple use case to elaborate, of someone using Sonos hardware for playing music from Spotify and from a local NAS. Also for simplicity, let us keep aside the SMB stuff where local NAS is concerned.
In the above use case, the Sonos control app needs to do just two things - first, to set up and configure Sonos hardware and then do tweaks like EQ/Trueplay. Or manage groups or any other management of Sonos hardware. All of this, wirelessly, via the app.
Second, it needs to play music from local libraries on a NAS. Much the way S1 does this today. Little needs to change from the way this has been done for over a decade, and with this the needs of the shrinking user base of NAS supplied music are well covered.
The app from 2018 or so is more than enough for both of the above.
Where music from Spotify is concerned the Sonos app need have no role to play, as it does not today. From the Spotify native app, one can do everything up to the point of selecting which Sonos speaker or group that the music should be played on.
But if any user of services prefers another service, they should be able to do just this, using the native app of that service - most cases, the service is picked on the basis of which native app is preferred; the music libraries vary little across services.
For this, the Sonos task would be to have as many streaming services as possible be able to hand over music to Sonos speakers as can be done by the Spotify app. By proactive work, not just by doing what Sonos does today of sitting back and having the service provider do what it takes to cast music to Sonos in the way Spotify can.
Sonos would do nothing for streaming service users in its app. Why does Sonos need to invent an app that tries to be everything for all users? The Sonos app should revert to what it was in the past - a wireless remote for Sonos hardware, in app form. And users would need to revert to the Sonos app only when hardware is to be added or tweaked. Or to play music from their NAS.
This is how I use Sonos today - for weeks on end I don’t open S1. I use the Spotify native app for music played through Sonos. I open S1 only on the now rare occasion of playing music from my NAS.
I suggest that Sonos should revert to what it does well for hardware - along with the provision of the music, let UI for music selection also be fully in the domain of the music provider, who is better equipped to do all the latest eye candy singing/dancing stuff in his UI. Users that prefer the eye candy of another music provider, should use that service, and cast the music from inside that app to Sonos.
Sonos can then shut down app development and focus on the hardware side; with development continuing to only include the necessary work to keep its reduced functionality hardware control app in shape and aligned with Sonos hardware changes. And save everyone - in Sonos and among users - from all the churn caused by things like S1, S2 and this latest S 2.1 for want of a better term. Even the issue of memory overload driven failure of units will be addressed by this approach.
All this seems to be so obvious, that I must be missing something. Yes, I have left out things like radio and maybe some other things, but that is a matter of detailing out that is premature to attempt just now.
