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Your feedback on the new Sonos App

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C
Userlevel 5
Badge +4

Have the moderators shown back up in this topic channel since they originated it, lol?

Nope. They’ve gone to ground, and are avoiding all interactions.

The crisis management here is terrible. 
I suspect they are now just accepting the crisis and hoping it will ‘manage itself’ and all this will fizzle out as we get ignored.

My prediction is they are going to just weather the storm, and put their collective heads in the sand. You won’t see any more statements, you won’t see an apology and you definitely won’t get a roll back. 
 

It’s two weeks in and they haven’t even acknowledged they think it’s a problem, or acknowledged the fix to the problem is just so easy: put the old app back until you add in the most basic functions that are now missing.

 

I am missing key parts of my experience that make the app unusable:

can’t edit the queue or manage a playlist any more

can’t see station art or meta data from streaming stations any more

cant see any Apple curated stations in recently played any more

can’t easily adjust volumes and groups any more

load time and navigating is sooooo slow now. I see a lot of blank grey screens waiting for my content to load.

 

But hey, maybe in a month or more we get the 80% of functionality we lost? 😡 

K
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

I work in tech and if I pushed out an update to my apps that was missing major capabilities and wasn’t backwards compatible knowing that many of my customers just autoupdate their apps, and I had no timeline that I could even tell them when they’d get their feature back, I’d be fired… I hope someone at Sonos gets fired over this.

I have seven of these speakers that are now just paperweights unless I run up and down stairs to my PC while I await the return of local library support in the mobile apps. I will never buy another product from this company.

I will also never update the app again until I read the forums first to see what they broke. :(

Pathetic customer service.

Don’t totally blame the developers, Patrick Spence (formally from the now defunct Blackberry) has been running Sonos into the ground since he became CEO.  The buck stops with him and because he had to make promises at the quarterly earnings including “exciting new products” this DOWNGRADE was forced out the door to meet his agenda and screw the customers if they don’t like it.  

Expect a new expensive subscription service to arrive when this cow-turd of an app further erodes revenue from the “exciting new products”.  Short sighted businessmen over and over again!  

F
Userlevel 1

The new app is complete CRAP!!!!!

 

Half my system is now off line. Sonos support had nothing to offer.

 

This is not about “missing features” this is about my stable system is now unusable.

 

Why have I spent so much money with this company?

 

J
Userlevel 2

I work in tech and if I pushed out an update to my apps that was missing major capabilities and wasn’t backwards compatible knowing that many of my customers just autoupdate their apps, and I had no timeline that I could even tell them when they’d get their feature back, I’d be fired… I hope someone at Sonos gets fired over this.

I have seven of these speakers that are now just paperweights unless I run up and down stairs to my PC while I await the return of local library support in the mobile apps. I will never buy another product from this company.

I will also never update the app again until I read the forums first to see what they broke. :(

Pathetic customer service.

Don’t totally blame the developers, Patrick Spence (formally from the now defunct Blackberry) has been running Sonos into the ground since he became CEO.  The buck stops with him and because he had to make promises at the quarterly earnings including “exciting new products” this DOWNGRADE was forced out the door to meet his agenda and screw the customers if they don’t like it.  

Expect a new expensive subscription service to arrive when this cow-turd of an app further erodes revenue from the “exciting new products”.  Short sighted businessmen over and over again!  

I don’t blame the Devs at all. It’s 100% management or up. It always is.

J
Userlevel 2

The new app is complete CRAP!!!!!

 

Half my system is now off line. Sonos support had nothing to offer.

 

This is not about “missing features” this is about my stable system is now unusable.

 

Why have I spent so much money with this company?

 

It’s missing features for me. I have 57k songs in my local library and don’t use streaming. My 7 speakers are now expensive paperweights.

T
Userlevel 1

Absolutely hate the new app. You need to start over and maybe do some user focus groups this time.

beyond the design and user experience issues the app is slow and becomes none responsive most of the time when I try and use it. Your hardware is pointless without a excellent app to interact with them so you need to get on top of this ASAP.

A
Userlevel 2

So where is my music library? It has gone from my laptop and of course both mobile devices. The folders have not moved. I could see no mention in the original post of how to access them now, just a mention that it will stay- but how can I access it now? I have neither the time nor the inclination to read every single comment on this long thread. I just want my system to work!!

B
Userlevel 2
Badge

When do you plan on addressing the lag in communications betwween the app and the speakers.  At least 1/3 of the time the app won’t connect and I get an error.  I am having similar issues with the web interface on my PC.  When it does connect, it does so after 10-15 seconds.  I have had numerous instances showing all speakers separated with no music playing when in fact there are 4 speakers grouped and the same song playing.  When that happens, I have zero control over the system whatsoever.  Volume adjustment is a joke with an extended lag when it works. 

S
Userlevel 5
Badge +9

When I don’t see my library in the android app I start whatever is queued up and the library seems to appear. Maybe coincidence don’t know?

"I saw the Stooges and the MC5"
C
Userlevel 5
Badge +4

More and more news media starting to pick up on this hot mess. Good. Maybe they care more about what media say than what their users say.

https://www.thurrott.com/music-videos/sonos/302560/sonos-responds-poorly-to-complaints-about-its-new-app

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/sonos-customers-unleash-frustrations-over-redesigned-app-in-community-ama/ar-BB1moh3o

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-this-company-s-biggest-fans-turned-against-it/ar-BB1mzVGA

D
Userlevel 4
Badge +1

More and more news media starting to pick up on this hot mess. Good. Maybe they care more about what media say than what their users say.

https://www.thurrott.com/music-videos/sonos/302560/sonos-responds-poorly-to-complaints-about-its-new-app

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/sonos-customers-unleash-frustrations-over-redesigned-app-in-community-ama/ar-BB1moh3o

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-this-company-s-biggest-fans-turned-against-it/ar-BB1mzVGA

Pity none of the bloggers, influencers (hate that term!) and various high-profile audio websites have the balls to say anything properly negative about it though. They really are just bought and paid for shills.

B
Userlevel 1

Hi - I have been a loyal Sonos user since the beginning and have NEVER posted on a forum before, but I have to chime in and so how much I dislike the new app and the removal of features.  I’m finding the experience awful, frustrating, not customer centric and pushing the Sonos content too much.   Please Sonos listen and get this right and get the alarm feature back on ASAP too.  If it doesn’t happen fast enough, loyalty can be transferred pretty quickly and disincentivises any sort of hardware upgrade as I will doubt your products now. 

M
Userlevel 4
Badge +2

Don’t totally blame the developers, Patrick Spence (formally from the now defunct Blackberry) has been running Sonos into the ground since he became CEO.  The buck stops with him and because he had to make promises at the quarterly earnings including “exciting new products” this DOWNGRADE was forced out the door to meet his agenda and screw the customers if they don’t like it.  

Expect a new expensive subscription service to arrive when this cow-turd of an app further erodes revenue from the “exciting new products”.  Short sighted businessmen over and over again!  

 

Yep, agreed.  

When I first got into the Sonos ecosystem, there were few real competitors.  The software has always been a bit dodgy, but there were workarounds (setting static IPs to stop speakers disappearing, etc), and I put up with it because the hardware was solid, and for a long time there wasn't much choice if I wanted this kind of system.  That's no longer the case. The market is now much more competitive.

This botched software release will undoubtedly cost Sonos.  I know I'm extremely unlikely to buy any more Sonos products.  I don't know what I'll change to, but having been through the S1/S2 debacle not all that long ago, and now this, I have no confidence in the company anymore.  To me, this is Sonos’ Cybertruck moment.  

C
Userlevel 5
Badge +4

I got an email today asking me to take a survey about batteries in the portable devices and replacing them when they wear out. I as very clear in my response it simply will not matter. I own a Move 1 and Move 2 and I will NEVER buy another Sonos device, so replaying the battery when it dies doesn’t matter to me at all. That’s the point at which I junk it and “move” on from my Move speakers.

And I’m so sick of all the smug fan boys on reddit saying they’ll buy people’s old kit. They’re all acting like because we aren’t throwing out our speakers that this app update and the company attitude is fine. It’s not.

 No, we aren’t throwing our speakers out or racing to sell them - but most of us will never buy another Sonos product. The haemorrhaging isn’t going to stop and it’s probably a long tail. You won’t see people throw out or sell a speaker today, but you will feel it 3 months from now when none of us upgrade and we all tell our personal and professional networks: “NEVER BUY SONOS”.

 

But good luck with the headphones 🤣 if they somehow turned out to be the best sounding device in the world I’d still never buy another Sonos product after this.

G

Salve, sto avendo molti problemi dopo l’aggiornamento dell’app.

- Tutte le playlist personalizzate Sonos sono sparite;

- non riesco a collegare più gli ERA 300 in surround;

- trueplay non funziona;

 - app molto lenta; 

Cercate di risolvere tutti questi problemi al più presto, soprattutto non vorrei perdere tutte le playlist Sonos. 
Grazie.

G
Userlevel 3

I’ve used Sonos speakers with my nas for years. After the S1/S2 debacle, I sold everything but my amp which I upgraded to S2.

Circa 1TB of flac files stored in folders by album, artist and genre. I would quickly navigate through the folders on the app, adding albums or individual songs to the end of queue to create playlists either to save or as a quick and dirty listening for a couple of hours.

That’s it. No streaming services other than the occasional play from Amazon music. Just quick and easy access to my large collection where I knew the location of anything I wanted to play. 

I didn’t use a lot of the more advanced features that many others here do, just find and play my own music. It took seconds. It worked. Simple.

Now I can’t add anything more than a single song, and only by replacing the queue. 1 song at a time. Bravo Sonos. WTF would you exclude this most fundamental of functionality?! Plans to put new Sonos speakers back in my other rooms are gone. I too will be exploring other brands.
 

B
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Circa 1TB of flac files stored in folders by album, artist and genre. I would quickly navigate through the folders on the app, adding albums or individual songs to the end of queue to create playlists either to save or as a quick and dirty listening for a couple of hours.

That’s it. No streaming services other than the occasional play from Amazon music. Just quick and easy access to my large collection where I knew the location of anything I wanted to play. 

Go try Sonopad and/or Sonophone. You'll be amazed.

A
Userlevel 3
Badge +3

Hi - I have been a loyal Sonos user since the beginning and have NEVER posted on a forum before, but I have to chime in and so how much I dislike the new app and the removal of features.  I’m finding the experience awful, frustrating, not customer centric and pushing the Sonos content too much.   Please Sonos listen and get this right and get the alarm feature back on ASAP too.  If it doesn’t happen fast enough, loyalty can be transferred pretty quickly and disincentivises any sort of hardware upgrade as I will doubt your products now. 

The alarm system is back on now. 

A
Userlevel 1

Wow! I’ve been a Sonos user for years, have introduced members of my family to it and have thousands of pounds worth of the kit across multiple rooms, tvs even on the boat. I’ve been an unashamed fanboy. 

I allowed the app to download to my phone which has rendered the whole collection unusable. The queue management which used to be intuitive is now unusable for all the reasons stated above by multiple users. 

I thought it must have been me missing the point of the app, so I Googled and ended up here. This is a total mess. I really need to rollback to S2 so I can use my system. Clearly, I won’t be buying any more Sonos until this is sorted or perhaps ever. I can’t believe that Sonos have such contempt for their customer base. They really didn’t seem ‘that’ kind of company until now. 

 

regards to all

 

Ian

C
Userlevel 4
Badge

Circa 1TB of flac files stored in folders by album, artist and genre. I would quickly navigate through the folders on the app, adding albums or individual songs to the end of queue to create playlists either to save or as a quick and dirty listening for a couple of hours.

That’s it. No streaming services other than the occasional play from Amazon music. Just quick and easy access to my large collection where I knew the location of anything I wanted to play. 

Go try Sonopad and/or Sonophone. You'll be amazed.

I see Sonopad is Number 2 in the Apple store paid-for apps chart today!

Let’s make it Number 1 :-) 

(Disclaimer - check the limitations shown in the listing before buying)

 

A
Userlevel 1

Back in Business - thanks to beynym and Green4head!

I just spent £2.99 on SonoPhone. It worked straight away and many of the features I needed are immediately and intuitively available. It’s responsive and it found my 2 x Sonos Roam which are lying around the place which the new app refuses to connect to. 

I haven’t figured out all of the features yet and I would urge anyone thinking of swapping to it to make sure it fits their needs, but for three quid I can now actually use my systems and enjoy my Saturday morning coffee with some music which is more than I could do an hour ago. 

Ian

 

A

I'm lucky enough that I didn't update the firmware on my Sonos products beyond 16.1.1, managed to install the 16.1 app, and turn off all updates. These work perfectly fine for me and do what I want them to do - I have no need for more metadata served up through the cloud (which is Sonos’ excuse for opening up our hardware to public access through a weakly protected cloud controller).

 

Now I just need to figure out how to block any requests from play.sonos.com into my network through a firewall. I suspect that this will be difficult, nigh on impossible and would also need all traffic routed through my NAS firewall or setting up a physical firewall before the router.

Even as someone fairly technical, this is not minor job for me, and it's all been brought on by executives at Sonos not caring about their existing customer base.

 

Like many others, I will be grandfathering out Sonos products as they start to fail (which would have been a lot sooner if I had upgraded the firmware by mistake!)

A

If anyone has Pihole or a similar DNS set up on their local network, you can also stop the apps from prompting you to upgrade (even if you have turned off the automatic updates) by blocking update.sonos.com.

C
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

I'm lucky enough that I didn't update the firmware on my Sonos products beyond 16.1.1, managed to install the 16.1 app, and turn off all updates. These work perfectly fine for me and do what I want them to do - I have no need for more metadata served up through the cloud (which is Sonos’ excuse for opening up our hardware to public access through a weakly protected cloud controller).

 

Now I just need to figure out how to block any requests from play.sonos.com into my network through a firewall. I suspect that this will be difficult, nigh on impossible and would also need all traffic routed through my NAS firewall or setting up a physical firewall before the router.

Even as someone fairly technical, this is not minor job for me, and it's all been brought on by executives at Sonos not caring about their existing customer base.

 

Like many others, I will be grandfathering out Sonos products as they start to fail (which would have been a lot sooner if I had upgraded the firmware by mistake!)

You could save time & effort by dumping the whole kaboodle into the bin right now & start over again 😝😁😎

Why inflict this mess on your nearest & dearest? 😋😜😎

It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -
T
Userlevel 4
Badge +3

Circa 1TB of flac files stored in folders by album, artist and genre. I would quickly navigate through the folders on the app, adding albums or individual songs to the end of queue to create playlists either to save or as a quick and dirty listening for a couple of hours.

That’s it. No streaming services other than the occasional play from Amazon music. Just quick and easy access to my large collection where I knew the location of anything I wanted to play. 

Go try Sonopad and/or Sonophone. You'll be amazed.

They are only iOS though. Is there an alternative for Android?

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