Sonos Corporation's True Agenda

I will not be purchasing any more Sonos equipment.

Your theory is sound and depressing.

Interesting theory. The only thing to contradict is this: 95% plus of the Sonos user base today does not have their own music they listen to, they pay for services or use radio stations.

But nothing of the rest of what you say is as outlandish as it first seems.

I fully agree that it was a disastrous roll out. I also believe some of the ideas about the direction that Sonos is probably heading (service oriented revenus), but that does not explain the lack of testing (apps crashing to the point I had to uninstall/reinstall) and missing features (alarm, play list management and other goodies). Some food for thought.

The new Sonos apps has been built from scratch, probably due to their changing software toolchain, development environment and process. Porting code from one development environment to another is not always possible. Also, note the release number format which has changed from a simple "16.1" to "80.00.04-release+yyyymmdd-build_number". Sonos took the opportunity for an UX relayout, to be trendy, which is not trivial and requires "hands-on" testing. This might be a wild guess, but the fact that the UX is slow/lagging prompt me to believe that new hooks are in place to keep track on usage of certain features.

Overall, yes it does takes courage to rebuild a brand`s core product, but Sonos either underestimated what the core product baseline includes (by ommiting features that their customers loved) or Sonos simply draw the line on the release content driven by other upcoming events (to support new product launch dates).

Sonos have been ambitious, but failed delivering the quality that their customers are expecting from their products. Sonos could have decided to leave alone Sonos S2 (and stop any fixes and dev on that version) and release a new Sonos apps only when it is functionnaly "at par" with Sonos S2. It was a conscious decision on their part, with the result we all experienced.

I would really like to be in their post-mortem release meeting just to hear the famous "I told you"... ;-)

Again, this is just my opinion.

Welcome to the forums.  I understand your anger and while it is valid maybe there are now dozens and dozens of posts which point to the reality of the matter.

It would be really helpful if everyone understands that features have not, I repeat *not* been removed.  There has been no new firmware to the amps and speakers and their inherent functionality is 100% unchanged.  So, alarms have not been removed, local libraries have not been removed, playlists (which are stored on the devices) have not been removed.  They remain present in the underlying OS — completely unchanged.

The app has been completely rewritten, and for whatever reasons that we can only speculate about, it has been released before some of functionality of the old app had been reinstated.  Yes, to the end user it makes no difference if the functions are not there, but it is because they have not been written in, not because they have been removed.  

the timeline for updates which replace current absent functionality has already been stated.   

So many new users posting of not buying Sonos ever again, selling or dumping their gear when the timeline for reinstating those missing features is in weeks.  We shouldn’t have to wait those weeks, but it looks like that is the reality of where we are.  

The whole ethos of Sonos is that it is service agnostic.    And yes Sonos would like some of that revenue stream too, hence Sonos radio.  There is no evidence that the open platform for other services is changing.  
 

I’m not defending the indefensible — the new app is ln’t ready.  But while I can’t see into the future, I’m prepared to wait the few weeks for the promised changes.  And besides, even as it is I can use my local library and use all my services.  
 

Sonos have effectively stolen weeks of full use of purchased equipment, and that is best case scenario. Their behaviours is appallin.

The playlists and music libraries are still there, but it doesn’t make any difference if the users can no longer delete, add, modify or search them. I am still convinced that the missing parts are intentional as part of their eventual plan to charge customers to use their services, and eventually their speakers. The trivial items like alarm and sleep timers can be added later as an after thought. But the version they rolled out now is basically going to be the same next year as it is now. No where in the Corporate announcements did they address a fix to the lack of control over playlists and libraries. And as you know, Sonos has complete control over whether or not your speakers will function. They can force their customers to do updates. As probably 90% of Sonos users only use streaming services, many of the changes in corporate direction will have little effect on them. But for those of us with our own music libraries, these changes are highly problematic. As the smart folks always say, follow the money. 

@Gee 2024 

They have announced that some of the missing features are coming back within a few months

But agree  companies dont just put web apps together and then offer them for free forever. Sonos likely has a plan to monetize this in some way beyond hardware sales, otherwise imo they wouldn’t bother. 

Fortunately, I still have the S2 app on my desktop and Apple iPad, so I currently have normal control over my system and can still listen to music. But the Sonos management’s initial silence and subsequent stubborn resistance and ridiculous weeks and months long time-lines, convince me that Sonos does not care about their customers, but only about their long term revenue. People need to understand this could mean millions of dollars in income and bonuses to executives, so they can afford to ignore a few months of complaints from people who are essentially captive to using their speaker systems. The ethos may have been service agnostic, but money changes things and corporate directions, especially with publicly traded stock involved.

Sonos f****ed up big time, and everyone was dealt a crappy app.  We all k lnow this.  But to say that So is don’tcare about their customers and only their revenue is a bit silly when their customers are their revenue.   Having existing customers come back to buy new kit is as important as findjng new customers.  There is no revenue without us.   The repeated notion of some kind of  evil corporate overlord that is out to get us is absurd.  As in all things in life — you pay your money and you make your choice.   if Sonos is not for you, well that is ok, we should all spend our money where it makes us happiest.