Sonos goes bankrupt! What then?

Not even Sonos is able to give a final answer to this hypothetical bankrupt scenario. No one can foreknow the future.

Of course they can: the Sonos App relies on the authentification on Sonos web servers. They go down, for whatever reason, the user will not able to set up an account and thus add hardware to it.
Should the account be already existing and the App logged in at least once, they maybe the user would have a chance to continue to use the hardware... (I never tried to see how long my Sonos App would work without live internet connection...
Of course we do not know what would happen if Sonos should go bankrupt: maybe a white knight would buy back the assets and maintain the infrastructure that allow people to log in and set up their hardware. Or maybe the buyer would knot care and buy only the patents and other valuable assets, without a second guess for the existing users.
So the reasonable thing to envisage when we buy Sonos, is that should things go wrong, we could end losing the ability to use the hardware.
As for the streaming service, I do not care too much as I listen only NAS shared music...
That being said, I am quit confident with Sonos, they have been in the business for quite a while and they offer good performance, reliable and affordable solution. So I am buying....

Question is not fully answered.
My jawbone 24UP is perfectly fine but I can’t set it up anymore because Jawbone went bankrupt and since we need to authentificate to a web server to finalize the setup, the hardware is now useless.
Nokia, Polaroïd, Lehman Brothers, Arthur Andersen... big names falling down are not unknown and just theoritical.
Back to the question: will I be able to use my Sonos speakers if by bad luck the company should go bankrupt?
To set up the speaker, we need to have a running app, with an account logged in. I guess that if no server to authentificate to, the setup of the Sonos system is impossible. Hardware is bricked.
For existing setup I guess we can run as long as we do not need to reinstall the Sonos app.

So you gave up on the industry leader to purchase from a company which is on its third (or is it fourth?) attempt at wireless multi-room audio, each incompatible with the next, and all spectacular failures? Well done!

I sold my Sonos and went to Musicast. Buy some good quality speakers or even an active speaker set and drive them with the MC amp or pre amp. Yamaha is a save company and if for some reason their MC service is discontinued you still have your high quality speakers.
So you answered on a Sonos forum purely to promote a competitor :8

Live WILD! Take a risk! Oh wait, you’d rather be cautious and careful? Perhaps a transistor radio and listen happily to am radio. Apologies, don’t really mean to offend you.
But just to reassure you, I was on the SONOS wagon almost from the start and still have an original Connect amp, two Connects, I gave my original Play 5 to my sister and it is still going strong. These are nearly 13 years old now. I also have 6 Play 1s, a Play 3, two Play 5 Gen2, and two bridges. I have never had a single problem or issue with ANY of them. Sorry, but I can’t rate them high enough. If they go under, who cares? They’ll still keep on working I’m sure.

I'm in the financial industry.......

Then you should be familiar with the Frank-Dodd based living will for banks...

No such thing exists for any consumer industry .. we will live in a fast moving world.

The Home Pod launch makes this topic extremely relevant. I just started building out my sonos system, as much as I like it I'm now concerned about the longevity of sonos.

So you are selling Sonos, the market leader, to buy a multi-room audio system from a company who is on their third version of a multi-room audio system after failing spectacularly with the last two?

Good purchasing strategy. Very logical. :?

Sonos don't release sales figures.

What we do get is information from retailers who sell Sonos product and we know that Sonos were the only people doing multi-room audio back when business was booming for Sonos, being the only fish in a small pond was very profitable.

Since wireless technology has become more commonplace and consumer demand for wireless multi-room audio has become more popular, other companies have come on-board which has eaten heavily into Sonos' profits. Amazon and Google are predicted almost universally to be the key players in multi-room audio over the next decade.

And that's why they have been letting staff go and is why people have concerns over the future of the company.

The OP has an excellent point but SONOS lack of an official reply is sad and maybe telling.

This isn't really the sort of thread that we tend to give much of an "official reply" to because it's more of a thought experiment. If the company does wind up in this sort of situation, we'd do everything in our power to keep your systems playing for as long as possible. That might mean releasing a more open source update, or perhaps having another company step in. I can't speak to what would happen with any specifics, but in 15 years we continue to be pushing forward, and we're at a time now with an even better opportunity ahead than ever before.

If you've decided to look elsewhere, we wish you the best and hope you're happy where you land. There are a lot of really exciting plans over here and perhaps our paths will cross again.

This hysteria is totally misplaced. The new CEO commented that (a) the company was profitable, and (b) the number of 'new homes' with Sonos was up 20% year-on-year for the holiday period. They're the market leader in their space and, even if they were to falter, there'd be plenty of suitors.

SONOS sales dropping
They don't divulge sales figures so you simply cannot know, but based on the above +20% comment this has to be incorrect.

I am currently selling my SONOS system on eBay and moved to MusicCast by Yamaha.

So why exactly are you here? Is this yet another negative post on behalf of a competitor?

The problem with this discussion is that it worries about Sonos going bankrupt while assuming the various streaming services can be depended on to always be there. I expect the opposite is true and you should be more concerned that the streaming service you have come to rely on is much more likely to fail. Streaming services are not profitable at this point in time and besides having all of the same infrastructure concerns as the Sonos backend servers do they also have to contend with licensing issues and other volatile factors. With a streaming service you can lose access to your favorite music at any time due to expiring license agreements or service failures and if they go belly up all together how are you going to recover the hundreds of hours spent building playlists on their proprietary platform with no way to export that work to another provider? I think all things considered the risk of a Sonos bankruptcy is pretty low on the list of things that can screw with your music system.

I think that it's unlikely that Sonos will go under but, as you say, you never know. If you just use connects and route them via conventional audio hardware, then the Sonos element becomes almost 'throw away' - and can be replaced by any other suitable streamer. You won't get all the benefits of the Sonos kit, but it does minimise the (tiny, IMHO) risk to your investment.

Sonos uses Amazon Web Services for its streaming architecture and routing/server infrastructure. I don't see Amazon going out of business too soon. ;)

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/sonos/

I would definitely agree. This service though is based on Sonos continuing to pay Amazon. How long would Amazon continue without being paid? Not very long.

Jgatie was talking about online streaming services, locally stored music does not require internet access to function. You can prove this by disconnecting your router from the internet and then playing some local files.