Your feedback on the new Sonos App

Well, okay, but look at all the new friends we’ve made along the way!

(From Reddit)

I certainly understand this. 

I personally think that, in the right hands, new objectives are possible without wrecking the old.
 

With the right leadership and expertise, those dependent on features no longer deemed supportable should have been given a warning, an alternative phase-out plan.

what once was a pretty cool way to access and play an extensive collection of one’s own collected music has, for me and many others, evaporated.

Sonos’ remarkable technological achievements, like cool compact players and remotes and smooth multi room networking, have over time been overtaken by competing technologies and suppliers.
 

This latest mis-step is a doozie.  Some here think it’ll be rectified. I’m skeptical. The more I read about the leadership and its arrogant defense, the less enchanted I am with Sonos as a partner. 
 

My two cents. 

Numbered volume slider?  Good God, you think that’s the top priority complaint?

How about I can’t access and search my own music?

I rest my case. 

The app is now absolutely UNUSABLE. I can’t connect to any of my Sonos hardware. I can’t even log into my account, because it sends me into an endless loop!!! Do you even have a basic QA process before releasing a new version??

And yes, I have uninstalled/reinstalled the app (Android) several times in a row now and also reset my hardware. NOTHING works. I am so frustrated that I want to sell all my Sonos gear!!!

Thats not how software development works. Something that takes 20 minutes work by a junior programmer may be done long before something that takes 100 man hours by a senior engineer.

Dear Sonos Team,

We have been using Sonos products for over 15 years and currently own more than 10 devices. We have always appreciated the excellent music quality and the simplicity of your system. However, the forced upgrade to the new app has been a major disappointment. The app frequently malfunctions, particularly when switching music between devices. Despite following all troubleshooting suggestions, the issues persist.

Please consider allowing users to download the previous S2 app. We are seriously contemplating switching to a different product if these problems are not addressed.

Well based on the things he is saying about the new App, clearly CEO Patrick Spence is a person that believes if he says it is good often enough we’ll all end up believing him. 

Well that's pretty much how things are today in so many fields, particularly politics ; you just say something and it is instantly true.

It's not much use to those of us still living in reality though. However did we get to this point of having so many fantasists occupying important positions?

Now my sonos app only shows 2 sonos out of 6 in my system…

The 4 older ones (play 1) are not showing

the 2 newer ones (move and beam) are showing

is that a way for sonos to force us to buy new hatdware?

if so it won t be sonos hardware…

I just can share my frustration with the new SONOS  App! It is slow, unorganised, and many liked features have been taken away without reason, e.g. jumping to a letter while searching lists in alphabetical order. 

So this is wired to the router with an ethernet cable and always has been. No problem with the old app. I'd like to see a fan boy explain how this is happening because of my WiFi setup? 

As a fanboy, error 1002 is a network error, so maybe some kind of firewall, or blocker, is preventing the connection - I don’t have a ‘connect (gen2)’ to test this, but my Sonos Port is working fine, maybe if someone here has a ‘connect’ that has updated and is working with the new Sonos App they can let you know and you can then maybe look closer to Home. I haven’t seen that many reports about this older hardware not working, but either way you can always give Sonos Support a call, to establish if they are perhaps aware of the issue.
https://support.sonos.com/s/contact

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/14/24178433/sonos-privacy-policy-customer-data-controversy

And?

 @TC123246 

As you’re in the UK you’re unaffected by this - here’s the UK privacy agreement..

It says that in the article. They have crossed a line by putting the app in the cloud without regard to privacy legislation and have no safeguards or controls in place let alone any options for customers. EU legislators will be rubbing their hands at the size of the fine they can issue . 

I don’t know about the EU legal aspect but let’s not forget there will be some very good potential benefits for users once the thing works reliably. Platform agnostic, and potential support for phones (hopefully they develop this) and tablets that lose their App Store support come to mind. These aren’t small things. 
 

Yes it’s buggy, was rushed and there are privacy and security concerns and they screwed us customers over. 

And now for something completely different . . . 

It’s now mid-June, the time when Sonos told us access to one’s local music library will be sorted, and I still can’t access my local music library (and yes - I’ve tried every fix suggested here).

Oh wait - it’s not completely different . . . it’s the same. Apparently my Sonos speakers really are obsolete.

Now my system is out of sync… and still only 2 apear in the app, but they all play, out of sync…

wth is sonos doing about it? It s been weeks!

• App is even slower since all the subsequent updates - which, let's remember, are just bringing back functionality that had been cut when the app was revamped. 
• Problems I was fortunate enough not to have with the original release, such as needing to reconnect my system every time the app is opened, are now present. 
• I need to open the app at least twice before everything loads correctly.  I'm otherwise getting “unable to load...” in various sections.  
• Now playing is pretty much never correct anymore.  I have to actually close and reopen the app for it to update, but that is only good as long as the currently playing song lasts.  
• With the latest update, playlists within Amazon are now truncated such that after reaching song 100, it loops back to song 1, leaving the other however many songs in a black hole.  And if you try to start at song 101 or beyond, you an error saying “Something went wrong.”  Congratulations Sonos; you finally got something correct.  Something went very, very wrong.  

One of the Sonos managers declared the New App “courageous.”

In light of evidence what the Beta testers thought -- that it needed work and wasn’t ready for release -- I’d say it wasn’t courageous.  It was fool-hearty.  At the very least.

It’s hard to understand why a company would sacrifice some if not all of its existing customer base as it pursues new business.  Examples of bad choices are in plain sight.

No one would question why Toyota, Honda and Nissan won so many hearts and minds not that long ago.  They paid attention to W. Edwards Deming and others who showed them that car companies would be far more successful if they respected the customers’ total cost of ownership, including reliability and service.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler had been pushing planned obsolescence.  4 years and 50,000 miles was the old norm.  In the end, the enlightened competitors won and for good reason.

Sonos, you made an enormous mistake taking your existing customers for granted and rendering their investment worthless.  I for one am not convinced you’ll survive the consequences of this mistake.

I don’t understand why the company would make an update to make the experience worse.  However, that seems to be a trend with tech companies.  Who does this benefit?  The UI is a lot worse than the previous version.  Sigh.  

I think the access to library had always been sorted - users need to switch the library share to use SMBv2 or higher sharing protocol - what was supposedly coming soon was the option to now search the local library. I have always been able to access the local library on the NAS box here, but note SMBv1 and http shares are not supported and likely won’t be in the new Sonos App at any point going forward.

I have tens of thousands of dollars of Sonos equipment in my house. I was planning to equip my mom and dad’s new house with the same setup. But this new app sucks. I have never until now not enjoyed Sonos. 

I have rarely seen a good company f* up so badly. You need to clean house in your technology department. And ideally just revert back to what was a perfect app.