Folks, given the price of these units, this course of action is simply unacceptable. I can’t believe that there isn’t a way to maintain legacy products within a updated system to allow for basic functionality.
If the recycle promotion offered a greater discount on replacement items (say 75% off) that would be one think, but 30% off replacement equipment for an arbitrarily imposed EOL (or the alternative - a SONOS system stuck with no further updates) is insufficient.
I have recommended SONOS products to many of my friends and family because of the great experience I’ve had to date. Now I doubt I’ll ever buy the equipment again, not with an arbitrary off switch built into all of them.
I hope you’ll reconsider either your approach for legacy products, or the discount you offer on replacement equipment.
I’m another person with more than half of their Sonos stuff becoming obsolete and a four figure bill to get back to what I currently have. I scrimp and save to buy my hifi, significant investments don’t happen that often. One of my Connects is wired to a twenty year old AV amp and the other a 30 year old Cambridge pre amp! Speakers in one room are 16 year old floor standing KEFs. My Sonos stuff is about the youngest bits of equipment I have.
Two other households I know have bought Sonos products because of my recommendations. The way I feel right now, that is very unlikely to happen again. 30% off replacement items means some of my stuff is depreciating faster than a high mileage car! I genuinely love my Sonos, more each day, and to have half of it tainted like this has made me feel sick.
There are two ways I can see to help people out here - one would be a MUCH bigger discount on replacement products and the other would be a promise to keep updating “Legacy” items as much as possible to stay abreast of music services. Freezing them seems like a promise that incompatibility with the future is not only guaranteed but embraced.
I truly hope that when the negative impact of this decision becomes apparent through this thread and other means, another email that sounds a bit more positive is received.
So just checked with a lawyer friend of mine - his view, In Europe, if you bought any Sonos product in the last 6 years that is affected by this you can take it back to the original retailer and get your money back!
Yeah, I was thinking about the 6 year rule.
I would guess that depends if any features are lost though?
Announcing this now and saying info will be available in 5 months is a bit off.
So, my Klipsch speakers purchased in 1990 are still going strong, but my Play 5 and bridge are to be rendered obsolete after eight years. That doesn’t sit well with me at all as these are by no means inexpensive, throw away items. I will not be spending any further money on Sonos products while I have indeed purchased more sets of Klipsch speakers over the years.
It also makes me wonder how long before my other Sonos devices are rendered obsolete??
Sonos has been considering this for well over a year, as this quote comes from Sonos’ November 2018 10-K filing:
We may choose to discontinue support for older versions of our products, resulting in customer dissatisfaction that could negatively affect our business and operating results. We have historically maintained, and we believe our customers have grown to expect, extensive backward compatibility for our older products and the software that supports them, allowing older products to continue to benefit from new software updates. We expect that in the near to intermediate term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products. Therefore, if we no longer provide extensive backward capability for our products, we may damage our relationship with our customers, and the value proposition of our products with existing and prospective customers may decline. We may lose existing customers if their older products cannot integrate with newer versions of our software, and this may also result in negative publicity that could adversely affect our reputation and brand loyalty and impact our ability to attract new customers or sell new products to existing customers. For these reasons, any decision to decrease or discontinue backward capability may decrease sales and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
haha so some financial analyst folks at Sonos had actually, honestly looked at how detrimental this move could be to the company and somehow someone convinced the bigwigs to do it anyway?
you could not make this shit up! I imagine Sonos offices are like an episode of the office.
Not Mr. McRae from the M3 forums?
hell yes dood :)
Sonos has been considering this for well over a year, as this quote comes from Sonos’ November 2018 10-K filing:
We may choose to discontinue support for older versions of our products, resulting in customer dissatisfaction that could negatively affect our business and operating results. We have historically maintained, and we believe our customers have grown to expect, extensive backward compatibility for our older products and the software that supports them, allowing older products to continue to benefit from new software updates. We expect that in the near to intermediate term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products. Therefore, if we no longer provide extensive backward capability for our products, we may damage our relationship with our customers, and the value proposition of our products with existing and prospective customers may decline. We may lose existing customers if their older products cannot integrate with newer versions of our software, and this may also result in negative publicity that could adversely affect our reputation and brand loyalty and impact our ability to attract new customers or sell new products to existing customers. For these reasons, any decision to decrease or discontinue backward capability may decrease sales and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
haha so some financial analyst folks at Sonos had actually, honestly looked at how detrimental this move could be to the company and somehow someone convinced the bigwigs to do it anyway?
you could not make this shit up! I imagine Sonos offices are like an episode of the office.
Not Mr. McRae from the M3 forums?
hell yes dood :)
Sonos has been considering this for well over a year, as this quote comes from Sonos’ November 2018 10-K filing:
We may choose to discontinue support for older versions of our products, resulting in customer dissatisfaction that could negatively affect our business and operating results. We have historically maintained, and we believe our customers have grown to expect, extensive backward compatibility for our older products and the software that supports them, allowing older products to continue to benefit from new software updates. We expect that in the near to intermediate term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products. Therefore, if we no longer provide extensive backward capability for our products, we may damage our relationship with our customers, and the value proposition of our products with existing and prospective customers may decline. We may lose existing customers if their older products cannot integrate with newer versions of our software, and this may also result in negative publicity that could adversely affect our reputation and brand loyalty and impact our ability to attract new customers or sell new products to existing customers. For these reasons, any decision to decrease or discontinue backward capability may decrease sales and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
haha so some financial analyst folks at Sonos had actually, honestly looked at how detrimental this move could be to the company and somehow someone convinced the bigwigs to do it anyway?
you could not make this shit up! I imagine Sonos offices are like an episode of the office.
Not Mr. McRae from the M3 forums?
hell yes dood :)
I recently read an article in which the writer predicted that Apple would soon acquire Sonos in an attempt to get their foothold back in the home-audio market. I knew I recognized this kcid move from somewhere. Looks like it’s all coming together. Apple can gnikcuf have ‘em.
What a disappointment in a company that I have been a supporter and free advertiser to friends and family for years. Sonos was indeed an industry disruptor at some point and provided top notch products and customer service. What happened to you guys?
I have 6 “legacy” products that won’t receive updates after May 2020 - which is basically over half of my system and in fact, are my main components - so more like 90% of my Sonos setup just lost its value and potentially functionality in the future. As many here, I have spent thousands on Sonos products and had no idea that speakers would become obsolete. In fact, I just added a new Beam to my TV… I wonder how long till that is obsolete as well? I understand that hardware can’t be designed to support features 10 years from now. However, I fully expect it to support all EXISTING services as it does today, even if services change. I don’t need any additional bells and whistles but I do need it to do what it does today for as long as I own them as long as I don’t break them. Is that an unreasonable expectation?
You stated in your original post that “In order to invent multi-room music and smart speakers, we combined the worlds of high-fidelity audio and computing. Every Sonos product has a microprocessor, flash memory, and other hardware components typically found in computers and smartphones.” There lies a reasonable approach actually: high-fidelity audio components do not get outdated, they will sound just as good in 10 years as they do today. So, the reasonable upgrade path would be to offer replacement of the memory/microprocessor/outdated speaker components to support the new features for people who want them. People send them in, you upgrade the components, and ship them back - all for a reasonable price (hopefully). People who do not want the new features and don’t want to upgrade should still be supported with the same services as they do today.
Most modern electronics have memory and microprocessor in it. If I buy a high-end receiver today, I understand that I should not expect it to support all future technologies that will come; but I do expect it to support ALL features that it supports when I bought it. So as long as you will continue to make sure the same functionality is supported on the “legacy” components - I think it is fair. But if you completely drop support for them and leave your customers hanging - that would be an extremely poor behavior.
Lastly, offering a 30% discount if your customers want to upgrade to new features in new products is generous and I appreciate it. However, offering a 30% discount because you are basically killing support for all the components we already spent (a lot) of money on in the neat future and can’t guarantee that they will work with the same features they do today is a huge slap in the face and not a generous offer at all. Why would anyone spend hundreds on the upgraded “modern” components if some years down the line the same components will also become not supported? I really do hope Sonos will put their thinking hat back on and reconsider this approach. I have never regretted my decision of going with Sonos system, and for the first time - I am.
I have a Play5 becoming obsolete.
Sonos, please respond. When will my play1s (4 of them), play3, soundbar, and sub be obsolete?
Please clarify what level of hardware each product has. Maybe you can’t tell me when you will stop supporting equipment, but tell me what’s next.
unhappy customer
You’ve just lost another customer, Sonos.
I’ll be putting your email which informed me that I’ll need to spend £££ more to keep my system working, on social media.
This is nothing short of blackmail and a huge commercial own goal.
Farewell.
Such crap - a Connect doesn’t need to do voice control either, and I’d be more happy if some things were disabled for it, and it alone - but holding the whole system to ransom is inexcusable.
As the OP said, you can opt for no more updates.
You’re literally missing my point.
If a Connect had some new feature disabled for it - fine. But it still should play nice with newer equipment that can support the new feature. They are keeping the WHOLE system ransom due to one older device. Not only that, but when a music service inevitably changes their API, the integration will stop working, so over time the speakers will break. This is unforgivable.
This is exactly what I was thinking… Why can’t the older units continue to operate as is, streaming the music throughout the house. Buy newer ones to enhance the brain trust and let the other ones slave off them. Maybe I am terribly misinformed about how the system works, but somehow I think this could happen.
There’s not really any reason this can’t happen - after all they were able to add Airplay 2 to the whole system by adding ANY SINGLE airplay 2 compatible unit.
This IS forced obsolescence. I was on the verge of buying a couple of Play 5 Gen 2s tonight to replace my Play 5 Gen 1s, but then the more I thought about it, I don’t now trust Sonos to brick my Play:1s or my Soundbar.
So I am going to wait until the announcement in May. If they haven’t come up with an acceptable solution to keeping my Play 5 Gen 1s in the same system, then I am going to assume the same will happen to everything in my kit and I will be looking at alternative ecosystems.
I am not wedded to Sonos, despite owning:
Playbar
Sub
Play 1 x2
The One with Alexa
three Gen 1 Play 5s
I will buy the best available alternative and sell my kit.
I’m very unhappy about this. Why is my 5yr old Connect:Amp I purchased from Bestbuy now a legacy item? So is the life cycle now only 5 years for your hardware? So if I purchase new amps I can expect to have to purchase new ones again in 5yrs to continue support?
I can not justify upgrading hardware this often, the expense and the cost to the environment. I will put my effort towards helping build an open source solution then.
No need to build a open source solution - one already exists.
So just checked with a lawyer friend of mine - his view, In Europe, if you bought any Sonos product in the last 6 years that is affected by this you can take it back to the original retailer and get your money back!
Well...we’re not in Europe! Therefore...SONOS is suing Google and the customers are going to start a lawsuit against SONOS. Time to dump their stock!
Hmmm. What lifespan do my old Play:1 speakers have? Given that they’re not listed as a product in the store any longer. I don’t want to fork out for a new Connect to Port replacement to find that not long down the road I have to replace all my Play:1 speakers too.
Does anyone know the official line?
Sonos, please answer his question. We want to know what’s next. Maybe not a date, but what’s next.
Who has the *alls to try and peddle this to a loyal and devout customer base?
Then insult us ever further by offering a 30% discount on replacement hardware?
Ich habe nur Befehle befolgt. (I was only following orders.)
Didn’t pass the smell test at Nuremberg, doesn’t now.
Pathetic way to run (ruin) what was a great product line. You should be ashamed to treat us this way.
All my Sonos system was bought at the same time only 4 years ago. Expect play 1 x2. 2 Sonos 5 and amp would now need replacing. Extremely disappointed
Play:1s are unaffected, and if you truly only purchased 4 years ago, that would be the Connect:Amp and Play:5 Gen 2, both sold after 2015, also unaffected.
The point I am making is I was clearly sold old stock not the 2 gen and yes truly 4 years ago. This also clearly affects the usability of my whole sonos system of 12 products
Have you alerted Best Buy to staff up for the rush of customers looking to take advantage of that generous %30 discount on SONOS gear being offered to it’s most loyal customers? No, I think not. I can’t imagine there are too many folks out there who will jump to take advantage of this offer without exhaustively researching all alternatives, including going back to hardwired systems. I notice SONOs is markedly down in the market today. I suggest you declare this disaster an early April Fools joke and go back to the drawing board before national consumer media gets a good grip on how UNHAPPY people are with this. Before your company goes under.
You’d think with a little work they could have programmed their software to help support legacy hardware so new hardware in the cluster could pick up the processing power/memory for the legacy items. That would have been a better route to go to support sales and they could say…
“Hey we notice you have x number of legacy items for us to continue support on these items you’ll need some newer sonos hardware added to your cluster to pick up the slack.”
I would be much more willing to purchase some new hardware so that my legacy hardware can still work. Instead of having to remove my legacy hardware so that my new items can continue to get updates.
Sonos has been considering this for well over a year, as this quote comes from Sonos’ November 2018 10-K filing:
We may choose to discontinue support for older versions of our products, resulting in customer dissatisfaction that could negatively affect our business and operating results. We have historically maintained, and we believe our customers have grown to expect, extensive backward compatibility for our older products and the software that supports them, allowing older products to continue to benefit from new software updates. We expect that in the near to intermediate term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products. Therefore, if we no longer provide extensive backward capability for our products, we may damage our relationship with our customers, and the value proposition of our products with existing and prospective customers may decline. We may lose existing customers if their older products cannot integrate with newer versions of our software, and this may also result in negative publicity that could adversely affect our reputation and brand loyalty and impact our ability to attract new customers or sell new products to existing customers. For these reasons, any decision to decrease or discontinue backward capability may decrease sales and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
haha so some financial analyst folks at Sonos had actually, honestly looked at how detrimental this move could be to the company and somehow someone convinced the bigwigs to do it anyway?
you could not make this shit up! I imagine Sonos offices are like an episode of the office.
Not Mr. McRae from the M3 forums?
hell yes dood :)
Bought my Play:5 brand new from a store end of December 2014. In September (?) 2015 gen 2 was announced.
So, after FIVE years Sonos tells me that my Play:5 is unsupported and thinks that I should buy a newer model. My old Play:5 still looks brand new, Australia is burning and there was no winter here in northern Europe.
I am NEVER EVER buying a Sonos product again. I urge everyone reading this to consider doing the same.
All this said, Sonos app is working on all our old android tablets over time that we were told might have limited functionality and no new features.
Maybe I missed it in the discussion but does it mean that those boxes “will not play music” or “will not have new whistles and bells”?
I’m unclear on that?
In May, the change will be that legacy players won’t get updates, so no new whistles and bells. However, if at some point in the future after then, a music service like Spotify or Apple Music changes their service connection protocols, there won’t be a software update for legacy devices to fix that connection and the service would stop working.
I'll echo what's already been said. I was just in a situation to expand my sonos system (most recent purchase was a beam). I already had four speakers (I admit a system much smaller than most) but my play:5 gen 1 which was bought brand new from a reputable retailer only about 4.5 years ago is having its support pulled? 4.5 years after cessation of production of a model is very very poor lifecycle. Working in the technology sector myself I understand the need make products obsolete from time to time...but 4.5 years after discontinuing a £400 product is ridiculous. I would expect a minimum of 8 years support after discontinuing the product. Sonos needs to seriously think about a way to allow the play:5 to continue in a system whilst allowing the remainder of the system to receive updates either by sanboxing the speaker and allowing the new speakers to somehow speak to it via a legacy method...I'm no developer but this needs to be looked at.
Needless to say if this is Sonos final word on the matter the beam will be my final sonos product purchase…
Pretty confident none of the sonos "valued customers" voices will be heard nor appreciated.
If the technology to support both is impossible, Sonos should be offering to upgrade working products to their equivalent replacement for a small administration fee (50 or 100 dollars seems reasonable).
Connect Amp replaced by new amp. Play:5 replaced by newer Play:5.
Your entire sales pitch in my decade plus with Sonos has been the Sonos Net ecosystem. If discontinuing a single product takes down the ability to update the Ecosystem, Sonos should bear some responsibility to keep the Sonos Net working.
Please consider a more reasonable replacement plan for same products of different generations.
I’ve spent thousands of pounds on SONOS products since 2006. I don’t need fancy new functions - I just need them to play music. Already impossible to simply play songs from an iPAD. Lots of questions raised about mixing old legacy components with new ones. Sounds like best approach is to keep the old stuff and buy a different system When you are forced to. Really rubbish excuse about how they have 20 year old components still working but they are making 2015 Components obsolete. Still we can get a 30% discount on replacing them all - guess we should be really grateful.
