End of Software Updates for Legacy Products

Dear SONOS, and dear community,

back in 2008, I started to invest in SONOS for my house. I own

• 1 Play:5 Gen1**
• 2 ZP90**
• 2 Connect:Amp**
• 2 Play:1
• 2 One
• 1 Playbar
• 1 Sub

** = these will render useless per SONOS’ announcement, with only a 4 months notice period (!). I will certainly de-invest going forward.

One of the strengths of SONOS has been quality and durability, and product support length unknown in the industry. While that is a strength, it is also a weakness for the business model which requires a constant & growing stream of revenue in order to remain profitable.

The community understands that SONOS needs to operate a viable business model to be able to pay their developers, R&D etc. The current strategy, to declare hardware that is still fully functional obsolete, is wrong for a number of reasons:

• waste of resources
• decline in long term customer satisfaction, damaging the business in the long run
• affected customers will very likely shrink their future investments
• the 30% discount on Trade up program harms margin

The argument that the old hardware does not meet performance requirements is baloney. In the end, it’s a bit of networking, buffering (I can’t see requirements change here), and file index for home library (I can’t see that grow).

SO HERE IS THE SUGGESTION:

• publish a 7 year life cycle policy - free updates/maintenance from date of purchase.
• offer 5 years extended life support for a subscription fee
• Trade-up option

I would be willing to pay 10 USD/EUR per month&household for this extended life subscription.

WHAT WOULD THIS DO FOR SONOS AND CUSTOMERS?

1. extended life subscription offers an additional revenue stream and pays for the maintenance
2. it’s a strong buying argument
3. customers can be confident about the product life cycle, and plan accordingly (and rather than seeing thousands of $$$ render useless overnight have a runway to replace bit by bit)
4. customer satisfaction and “recommend to a friend” would go up

PLEASE, SONOS, RE-THINK YOUR POLICY AND CONSIDER AN EXTENDED LIFE SUBSCRIPTION.

What do others think about this?

- Tobias

Having made a pretty substantial investment in a Sonos system, I’m not at all impressed with this announcement and agree with Retro Kid’s response.   How long will the 30% discount offer stand?  Not that I’m keen to put good money after bad – one has to wonder how soon it will be before the new Sonos system becomes redundant? Sad news Sonos, very sad…..

SONOS-”Without new software updates, access to services and overall functionality of your sound system will eventually be disrupted, particularly as partners evolve their technology.” 

So the perfectly satisfactory hardware (cabinet, switchgear, speakers, crossovers etc) is no longer serviceable because SONOS chooses not to provide any hard or soft modifications to accomodate future “partners” changes?

How ethically unsound and wasteful.

When I bought the boatload of SONOS products over the years I don’t ever remember being told--”by the way we may decide at some unspecified time in the future, to deliberately prevent your product from working. Your equipment may be as good as new but we will ensure you have to replace it.”Whilst I can fully accept that I cannot expect infinite updates when the tech evolves, to choose NOT to maintain the original capability of equipment is thororoughly unprincipled.

...and NO I will not be taking advantage of your “generous” (haha) trade in offer. You’d have to be a complete twonk to have a perfectly satisfactory investment made obsolete and be invited to repeat the exercise.

When my kit starts to give problems I’ll select a replacement more carefully ie not Sonos.

I've spent £3000 on building your Sonos brand for the last 9 years and you repay me with this! Laughable if it wasn't so expensive! I do not want to throw my equipment away for the same equipment. I'm not bothered that there is a higher watt output on your new amp or iPhones work better with the new connect!! How long before the £1400 I spent last year on a play bar and sub is worthless... Unbelievable! 30% off is a kick in the dick! This brings the current price of the amp and connect to the same price I paid for them a few years back! You get better deals on black Friday!  Sonos has just ruined its impeccable reputation overnight. I wouldnt buy another Sonos product ever again!! SHAME ON YOU!

It seems Sonos have been expecting a backlash. I assume they are hoping that people have a short memory and start buying again after the storm calms down. I saw this in the The Register yesterday….

"We expect that in the near term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products," the manufacturer's Q4 2019 10-K financial filing explains. "If we no longer provide extensive backward capability for our products, we may damage our relationship with our existing customers, as well as our reputation, brand loyalty and ability to attract new customers."

Another potential issue - if you have a number of legacy components and buy a new Sonos item after May 2020, presumably it will come with a version of the software that is not supported by the legacy items. Effectively this would prevent me from ever buying any more Sonos speakers as I can’t afford to trade in the existing legacy ones (a Play 5, 2 x Connect:Amp and 2 x Connect).

Absolutely disgusting - I have a whole system of Sonos equipment and now won’t be able to upgrade most of it until I have been forced to spend hundreds of pounds to replace perfectly good kit.  Disgraceful treatment of loyal customers and I for one won’t be recommending Sonos to anyone.  

Also, where does it stop?  If they succeed with this then what's to stop them continuing to discontinue updating other equipment purely to drive new sales.

I haven’t managed to read all 46 pages, but my main concern would be whether Spotify and Internet radio will continue to work indefinitely, or will just stop after a while? Also would the iOS App support old systems? Did Ryan answer those?

Having 5 legacy devices I’m certainly not buying 6 new ones (£2354 less scrappage) to give equivalent performance, even with the trade-in (so basically what I have already, except replacing large Connect:Amp speakers with 1SLs).

I’m also stopping recommending Sonos, who I always assumed would be the last people to stop supporting any of their devices (which is always the risk with anything that relies on remote internet servers, I have a couple of paperweights from other manufacturers already).

Also was there an answer as to what current devices are expected to have shorter lives and so should probably be avoided? E.g. the PlayBar hardware is clearly older than the PlayBase/Beam, so perhaps the former should be considered a less-good choice?

Finally - have they considered that people with legacy systems probably can’t buy any new Sonos products, as they would come with firmware too new to work with their system??!!??
Lots of lost sales!!
(You might get lucky with a model that came out some time ago, or you might not.)

There is a simple way round this. I am a Broadcast Sound Engineer and in 5 minutes a colleague and I figured out how to get around this issue. However I am reluctant to post it here asI believe Sonos would attempt to close this avenue.

Just think about it for a few minutes and I’m sure you will sus out how to use one new piece of kit and a completely separate (Legacy) or (perfectly useable piece of expensive kit that Sonos want you to ditch into the ocean , kill some dolphins and buy their new time constricted rental device) on a separate LAN.

you can do this for £100.00

good luck all.

I haven’t been able to read through all of the (currently 1100) replies as yet, but I felt compelled to make my first community post here after 6 years of admittedly excellent Sonos ownership. 

In that 6 years I have purchased a Gen 1 Play 5 (started with this) and bridge, then added 2 play 1’s, a Gen 2 play 5, a playbar and a sub.  So a decent size system, but I’m sure others have more. 

Also in that time, I have recommended Sonos products to many family and friends.

This announcement makes me regret all of that TBH.  Sonos clearly have very clever people working there, and I’m sure you could engineer an alternative way around this if you wanted to. 

I don’t need voice control, or any of that nonsense, I just need my speakers to stream Spotify, and work with my TV.

If you are now saying that for example, the playbar and sub I spent over a grand on will be next in line for EOL, then I am selling all of my setup and moving to something else. 

A 30% discount is not sufficient when you are now saying product support will only be 5 years.  There should be an option of a ‘lite’ os that still allows all the speakers to talk to each other, or a standalone processing unit of some sort. 

Very disappointing.