As a Sonos user for over 10 years, purchasing and, for the most part, enjoying close to 30 Sonos wireless speaker devices in that time (Play1, Play3, Five, Soundbars, Beam, Sub, ARC, and Era 300s), I have finally come to the stark realization - it's over. Sonos is no longer what it used to be. It is not what it was meant to be. It is not what the original designers dreamed SONOS could have been, and very nearly was… perfect.
The Sonos app and ecosystem are now flakey, unwieldy, unresponsive, heavy and no longer the awe and joy I used to amaze friends and family with.
Here is why…
Money. More specifically, monetization.
The primary, key flaw with the new SONOS app and ecosystem is that what used to be a private, on network wireless audio control system is now a cloud based controller system that requires a round trip to Sonos servers to process, collect and finally respond to what you have asked the local system to do.
Volume up? Send the request out across the Internet to Sonos servers, where they process the request, store your activity data, and finally send a “volume up” command back down the long Internet pipe to your speakers.
Compare this round-trip delay, collision, fighting through routers, NAT, firewalls, and Internet congestion, and back again, with the previous Sonos app, which flew through your local WiFi to instantly ‘volume up’ at the lightest touch.
There is no amount of tuning, optimization or payload streamlining that can fix this. Sonos knows this. Sonos also knew full well the disruption this significant communication change would cause. It is impossible for them not to have known… a junior network engineer could have easily run the math. A team of talented Sonos IT technical staff would have understood the impact immediately. I am sure many on the design team raged passionately against the machine.
So why would Sonos management choose a design path so clearly destined for catastrophic product experience issues? Especially considering this change provides absolutely zero benefits, features or upside for the end-user customers.
Name even just one, real, tangible benefit that sending all your Sonos control commands, listening information and usage data to Sonos provides the user. Name just one!
Why, oh why?
Money. Monetization. Stockholders. Stock price.
Sonos management convinced stakeholders that the key to improving the company’s bottom line and long-term stock price was user data. Collect it. Analyze it. Amalgamate it. Monetize it.
The only way Sonos could amass a high volume of useful, relevant and valuable usage data was to change how the end-user interacts with their products.
Don’t tell the speakers to play your morning mix. Tell Sonos, and we will relay the request to your speakers. No need to communicate ‘volume up’ to your kitchen Play Five stereo pair, tell Sonos servers instead. After they capture the time, your current volume level, the audio you were playing, and other metadata surrounding your choice to increase the volume, Sonos will be sure and adjust the volume up one more notch as soon as they possibly can.
Sonos believed the issues would not be that bad. They could ride it out. The financial upside far outweighed the real negative impact on customer usage experience.
Sonos was wrong! Check out the Sonos 5-year stock price PLUMMET.
If Sonos is unable to reverse course back to its core, winning product combination — a local WiFi audio system with streaming service integration —
Sonos won’t be around long enough to release App v3.
