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gijsbos
Contributor I
September 10, 2017
Answered

Sonos is bankrupt!

  • September 10, 2017
  • 11 replies
  • 2712 views
ok, not really.
But no company has eternal life. Sonos doesn't have it neither.

So, let's use our imagination and imagine that Sonos goes bankrupt (doesn't matter if it is likely or not).

Q: What will happen to our speakers?
I presume we won't see any software updates coming (assuming Sonos won't open source it). But what else will happen?

Background: reason I'm asking is that I strongly dislike the risk of being reliant on a company to have my speakers to work and I'm not sure whether this is the case with Sonos.
I don't want to buy a "Revolv smart home hub" when I could have bought a pair of speakers that could last decades, barring technical failures.

What's your take on whether Sonos speakers need Sonos-the-company to exist or not?

Gijs
p.s. I realise that if the company disappears and new services emerge afterwards that they probably won't be supported either
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      Best answer by passopp
      Sonos, as discussed in another thread on this board, is a proprietary ecosystem requiring continous maintenance through updates in order to ensure ongoing compatibility with their online music service partners.
      Without these updates, the system's online streaming features would slowly, but steadily cease to function.
      Local network shares would not be as dramatically affected, as it would take a complete change in protocols for Sonos to stop getting access to your local library (i.e. see the current SMB v2 discussion on this board).

      If you prefer speakers which last a couple of decades and can still be fully used even after the manufacturer went out of business I'd suggest a regular passive setup rather than a mini computer running a modified, unrootable Linux with some speaker hardwired to it.

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      MikeV
      MikeV
      September 12, 2017
      Honestly, I think Sonos has a large enough customer base now that music services will be pressured to maintain thier connection to Sonos even if Sonos the company were to just disappear.

      The question is... is this possible? Is there enough information stored on your Sonos device to tell it the appropriate server(s) to connect to for the music service, or is it getting that info from a Sonos cloud-based server that would go away if Sonos does?

      And also, while you may be able to control Sonos through the controller app in such a situation, things that do rely on Sonos-owned and managed cloud servers, like Spotify Connect (and I would imagine Amazon Alexa support) will likely stop functioning if Sonos goes under.

      But I share the belief that Sonos would be acquired at a fire sale price by another company that would work to integrate the two and probably give a small amount of life extension to Sonos products before treating us to new products that won't be backwards-compatible and will be replaced within a year or two, in accordance with most other consumer electronics company product cycles. 🙂
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