Contributor I

Sonos Corporation's True Agenda

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With the disastrous roll out of latest Sonos controller app, I began to wonder why would they force an upgrade that was so dysfunctional and lacking so many features that customers liked. Also it seemed strange that users were no longer able to see and modify music folders, or playlists, or update the music library. At first, I thought, wow they really screwed this up. How could they leave all this out? Why are they so reluctant to offer a roll back to a working version? When I read Sonos executive’s Maxime Bouvat-Merlin’s phoney response and explanation, that’s when I realized, it was on purpose.

Then I thought, what is the long term agenda of Sonos? What is the long term agenda of any greedy corporation? To maximize revenue and profits, of course. I then realized that Sonos is about to follow the plan of Apple management, which was to slowly and not so subtly force people off of iTunes and onto their Apple Music subscription service. That’s where the long term money is. I mean, why sell someone a house, when you can force them to be renters forever. And raise the “rent” whenever and to whatever you want. And they must stick with your subscription service, because they don’t own any of the content/music.

And that’s where I think Sonos is heading. By removing features and controls from the user, they are moving into a subscription based service, where users/customers/owners will have to pay a monthly fee to Sonos for online services. They may offer bundles with streaming services, like 10.99 per month for Sonos, Pandora, Apple Music, and Radio stations. Or they may be trying to start their own music subscription service. They may even go as far as charging owners of their speaker systems to pay a monthly fee just to run their systems and listen to their own music. Why just have your customers buy highly over-priced speaker systems when you can also have them pay a monthly fee to use them…?

Though, I’m not sure they would implement that last item, because they would face a huge Class Action lawsuit. But they could make the app so useless for music owners to play their own music that they would force many people to pay for their subscription service just to be able to listen to music. That would probably cause another Class Action lawsuit. But being greedy and stupid has never been an obstacle to any corporate management.

So, I/you/we may want to hold off on that planned new speaker purchase until this all shakes out. Or we may decide to bail on Sonos now while we can still get a good price for our equipment on the secondary market.

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G

Gee 2024Author

Contributor I

I disagree. Sonos has a captive customer base where many have spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on their systems, which only work via the Sonos apps. They are not transferable or usable on any other system. Sonos controls whether their customer’s systems will work or not. After spending hundreds to thousands of dollars, it is doubtful many customers will be able to just walk away from that. And despite this latest disaster of a roll-out, Sonos also knows they have the best and most advanced Wi-fi speaker systems available. Two years ago in an attempt to move away from Sonos, I bought two Denon speakers, but their software app couldn’t even pair a set of stereo speakers.

Many people’s systems have been totally “bricked” by this update, and telling them to be patient for a few weeks or months, and not even offering a roll-back, is why I know Sonos does not care about their “captive” customers. It is obvious by their actions.

Let’s see how the customer base feels when Sonos starts charging $4.98 per month for customers to use their own speakers. Hmm that’s 5 million users, times 5 dollars per month, times twelve months per year. Ah yes $300,000,000 per year in additional revenue. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for companies making money and increasing revenue, but this is not what I “signed up for” when I originally bought their speakers.

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cpalmer74

Prominent Collaborator I

With the disastrous roll out of latest Sonos controller app, I began to wonder why would they force an upgrade that was so dysfunctional and lacking so many features that customers liked. Also it seemed strange that users were no longer able to see and modify music folders, or playlists, or update the music library. At first, I thought, wow they really screwed this up. How could they leave all this out? Why are they so reluctant to offer a roll back to a working version? When I read Sonos executive’s Maxime Bouvat-Merlin’s phoney response and explanation, that’s when I realized, it was on purpose.

Then I thought, what is the long term agenda of Sonos? What is the long term agenda of any greedy corporation? To maximize revenue and profits, of course. I then realized that Sonos is about to follow the plan of Apple management, which was to slowly and not so subtly force people off of iTunes and onto their Apple Music subscription service. That’s where the long term money is. I mean, why sell someone a house, when you can force them to be renters forever. And raise the “rent” whenever and to whatever you want. And they must stick with your subscription service, because they don’t own any of the content/music.

And that’s where I think Sonos is heading. By removing features and controls from the user, they are moving into a subscription based service, where users/customers/owners will have to pay a monthly fee to Sonos for online services. They may offer bundles with streaming services, like 10.99 per month for Sonos, Pandora, Apple Music, and Radio stations. Or they may be trying to start their own music subscription service. They may even go as far as charging owners of their speaker systems to pay a monthly fee just to run their systems and listen to their own music. Why just have your customers buy highly over-priced speaker systems when you can also have them pay a monthly fee to use them…?

Though, I’m not sure they would implement that last item, because they would face a huge Class Action lawsuit. But they could make the app so useless for music owners to play their own music that they would force many people to pay for their subscription service just to be able to listen to music. That would probably cause another Class Action lawsuit. But being greedy and stupid has never been an obstacle to any corporate management.

So, I/you/we may want to hold off on that planned new speaker purchase until this all shakes out. Or we may decide to bail on Sonos now while we can still get a good price for our equipment on the secondary market.

Ouch. This is brutal.

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A

Anonymous

I disagree. Sonos has a captive customer base where many have spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on their systems, which only work via the Sonos apps. They are not transferable or usable on any other system. Sonos controls whether their customer’s systems will work or not. After spending hundreds to thousands of dollars, it is doubtful many customers will be able to just walk away from that. And despite this latest disaster of a roll-out, Sonos also knows they have the best and most advanced Wi-fi speaker systems available. Two years ago in an attempt to move away from Sonos, I bought two Denon speakers, but their software app couldn’t even pair a set of stereo speakers.

Many people’s systems have been totally “bricked” by this update, and telling them to be patient for a few weeks or months, and not even offering a roll-back, is why I know Sonos does not care about their “captive” customers. It is obvious by their actions.

Let’s see how the customer base feels when Sonos starts charging $4.98 per month for customers to use their own speakers. Hmm that’s 5 million users, times 5 dollars per month, times twelve months per year. Ah yes $300,000,000 per year in additional revenue. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for companies making money and increasing revenue, but this is not what I “signed up for” when I originally bought their speakers.

I disagree. You are not captive unless you choose to be. You are free to put the whole lot on Ebay and sell it, and as I pointed out elsewhere, you will get as much for it now as you did before the new app. There are a lot of things you can buy that are more expensive than Sonos — people buy and sell cars all the time, as you are not captive by virtue of your purchase. In fact there are plenty of people who have stated they are shedding their kit for something else. You even indicated that you yourself were not captive as you bought a competitors product. That you returned to Sonos was down to your free will and nothing else. So the whole premise of your argument is wrong.
It’s very tempting for people to think up weird and wonderful conspiracies because it’s much more interesting than the mundane reality. Millions still think NASA didn’t put a man on the moon or that princess Diana wasn’t killed by a drunk chauffeur. So why think that Sonos didn’t simply shove out a premature buggy app when some grand evil plan sounds so much more salacious?

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cpalmer74

Prominent Collaborator I

With the disastrous roll out of latest Sonos controller app, I began to wonder why would they force an upgrade that was so dysfunctional and lacking so many features that customers liked. Also it seemed strange that users were no longer able to see and modify music folders, or playlists, or update the music library. At first, I thought, wow they really screwed this up. How could they leave all this out? Why are they so reluctant to offer a roll back to a working version? When I read Sonos executive’s Maxime Bouvat-Merlin’s phoney response and explanation, that’s when I realized, it was on purpose.

Then I thought, what is the long term agenda of Sonos? What is the long term agenda of any greedy corporation? To maximize revenue and profits, of course. I then realized that Sonos is about to follow the plan of Apple management, which was to slowly and not so subtly force people off of iTunes and onto their Apple Music subscription service. That’s where the long term money is. I mean, why sell someone a house, when you can force them to be renters forever. And raise the “rent” whenever and to whatever you want. And they must stick with your subscription service, because they don’t own any of the content/music.

And that’s where I think Sonos is heading. By removing features and controls from the user, they are moving into a subscription based service, where users/customers/owners will have to pay a monthly fee to Sonos for online services. They may offer bundles with streaming services, like 10.99 per month for Sonos, Pandora, Apple Music, and Radio stations. Or they may be trying to start their own music subscription service. They may even go as far as charging owners of their speaker systems to pay a monthly fee just to run their systems and listen to their own music. Why just have your customers buy highly over-priced speaker systems when you can also have them pay a monthly fee to use them…?

Though, I’m not sure they would implement that last item, because they would face a huge Class Action lawsuit. But they could make the app so useless for music owners to play their own music that they would force many people to pay for their subscription service just to be able to listen to music. That would probably cause another Class Action lawsuit. But being greedy and stupid has never been an obstacle to any corporate management.

So, I/you/we may want to hold off on that planned new speaker purchase until this all shakes out. Or we may decide to bail on Sonos now while we can still get a good price for our equipment on the secondary market.

Sonos-ers

We need to first assume incompetence BEFORE moving into malice. I’m sure nobody’s plan said “Screw over customers. Due May 9. 100% Complete.”

I DO completely believe that the Sonos leaders don’t use Sonos products. They would not do this to themselves.

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S

Sarasota Mike

Contributor I

THE NEW APP S U C K S!!! Restore the previous version !!!!

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G

Gee 2024Author

Contributor I

I disagree. Sonos has a captive customer base where many have spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on their systems, which only work via the Sonos apps. They are not transferable or usable on any other system. Sonos controls whether their customer’s systems will work or not. After spending hundreds to thousands of dollars, it is doubtful many customers will be able to just walk away from that. And despite this latest disaster of a roll-out, Sonos also knows they have the best and most advanced Wi-fi speaker systems available. Two years ago in an attempt to move away from Sonos, I bought two Denon speakers, but their software app couldn’t even pair a set of stereo speakers.

Many people’s systems have been totally “bricked” by this update, and telling them to be patient for a few weeks or months, and not even offering a roll-back, is why I know Sonos does not care about their “captive” customers. It is obvious by their actions.

Let’s see how the customer base feels when Sonos starts charging $4.98 per month for customers to use their own speakers. Hmm that’s 5 million users, times 5 dollars per month, times twelve months per year. Ah yes $300,000,000 per year in additional revenue. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for companies making money and increasing revenue, but this is not what I “signed up for” when I originally bought their speakers.

I disagree. You are not captive unless you choose to be. You are free to put the whole lot on Ebay and sell it, and as I pointed out elsewhere, you will get as much for it now as you did before the new app. There are a lot of things you can buy that are more expensive than Sonos — people buy and sell cars all the time, as you are not captive by virtue of your purchase. In fact there are plenty of people who have stated they are shedding their kit for something else. You even indicated that you yourself were not captive as you bought a competitors product. That you returned to Sonos was down to your free will and nothing else. So the whole premise of your argument is wrong.
It’s very tempting for people to think up weird and wonderful conspiracies because it’s much more interesting than the mundane reality. Millions still think NASA didn’t put a man on the moon or that princess Diana wasn’t killed by a drunk chauffeur. So why think that Sonos didn’t simply shove out a premature buggy app when some grand evil plan sounds so much more salacious?

I disagree. Many other customers feel betrayed by Sonos and feel locked in to Sonos after spending thousands on their equipment. Perhaps your investment isn’t as substantial. Look, I generally don’t believe in conspiracies, and it’s not a conspiracy if it is an action taken by a single entity upon it’s customers. That’s like saying Enron was a conspiracy theory for over charging and ripping off other power companies. You are giving Sonos too much credit for an honest mistake. And I’m not assigning any malicious intent on Sonos. Just greed and the need to increase their revenue. But the way their management has responded makes it look malicious. So, looking at the facts, the only thing that I can conclude is that Sonos is moving towards a fee for service business plan. And for obvious reasons they are trying to keep it secret. The way they hyped their upgrade, and how secretive they were about what the changes were, and why they rushed an unprepared upgrade leads me to see that there is outside and inside pressure to quickly increase their revenue. If Sonos is moving towards a fee for service model, I just wish they would be honest about it and forewarn their customers.

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contaygious

Trending Lyricist I

They can't take away Spotify from us that would be a huge lawsuit. If I hsve Spotify there's no way I'm paying for another streaming music thing. They clesrly made a new app to roll something out but I don't see how they could charge us to use the existing app. It wouldn't make sense. I think arlo did something like this where you got free video storage and then they started charging for it, but they did it with new cameras. If you had the old camera they couldn't take it away from you.

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koolaid

Lyricist I

The underlying reason that something like this can happen to a large, mostly content customer base comes down to one word: monetization.

The internet has almost completely converted our entire economy into a “subscription” economy.

Noone wants to sell you a widget, then move on to find more people to sell more widgets to.

They key to “wall street success” for these companies is now sell the initial widget, then attach an ongoing revenue stream to the it. The “cloud” is IDEAL for this kind of exploitation. If you don’t make this happen, your business is considered a failure.

For example:You can buy a programmable mouse, with 16 programmable buttons from Razer which is a real productivity accelerator, but in order to use it, you have do download a 75Mb program, create an account on their site, start a cloud connected service when you start your computer, and log in to use it. A mouse… a MOUSE requires this. Arguably the simplest computer input device in existence.

I’ve lost count of the “smart devices” I’ve automated my home over the years that have simply bricked because of acqusition, end of life or “out of business” scenarios. I have box full of them.

Sonos has been marching in this direction for some time, and the recent app disaster has tipped their hand in the most public and embarassing way possible.

The point made clearly in the posts above this one is inescapable: Expect your Sonos system to come with a monthly cost in the near future. At first this will be presented as “premium features”, like Sonos’ super-cool streaming channels (at the cost of eliminating the competition’s less costly free services), but make no mistake. There’s an inescapable cost coming down the pike in short order. This will be presented under the guise of “in order to present the best user experience without all of these filthy free, undependable other ghetto services”, but it’s coming. They may even try to scare their users by throwing up an internet security danger straw man. I wouldn’t be surprised.

For my part, I’m disengaging from any product that has an active, ongoing cloud tie-in whenever possible. Any device that will simply stop working at the whim of management, or if the business fails or gets shut down due to acquisition is off the table for me.

There are now many choices for whole house audio that don’t involve a single point of failure. Technical folks can build an excellent system using raspberry Pi’s and other micro boards, an option that wasn’t available back when Sonos made their initial devices.

For my part, I replaced all five of my sonos connects with Acrylic up2Stream boxes and haven’t missed a beat. If Acrylic goes out of business tomorrow, my music will continue to stream.

Enough is enough already.

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jgatie

Wow. Just . . . uhh . . . wow. 😕

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sigh

Prodigy II

There are now many choices for whole house audio that don’t involve a single point of failure. Technical folks can build an excellent system using raspberry Pi’s and other micro boards, an option that wasn’t available back when Sonos made their initial devices.

For my part, I replaced all five of my sonos connects with Acrylic up2Stream boxes and haven’t missed a beat. If Acrylic goes out of business tomorrow, my music will continue to stream.

Enough is enough already.

When Sonos were starting out slimserver and squeezeboxes were the open alternative that you could diy. I know because I used it for a couple of years both in-home and across vpns, before buying into Sonos zone players.

If Arylic/Linkplay go out of business your up2Stream boxes will continue streaming until the online services update endpoints, APIs or protocols. Without anyone to keep the firmware for the embedded services or the app for app services up to date there will be no bug fixing, updating services and the boxes will still eventually end up bricks as they become incompatible with everything they used to work with.

The other scenario is what happens if Arylic get bought. When Google bought SageTV, they closed sourced everything and immediately stopped the sale of devices because they wanted the company IP for internal use in other Google products. While the community tried to battle on, the sale basically made the devices useless.

Unless you are building everything, hardware and software, yourself then everything has a single point of failure, it’s just a case of deciding what your acceptable risk level is and the cost/effort/personal time you want to put into reducing the risk.

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