Please note that we’ve created a new thread with some clarifications to questions that have come up several times in this thread. Please see here to continue the discussion if you still have any questions. The information contained in this thread is outdated and may no longer be accurate.
We have some important news regarding our oldest Sonos devices shared on the Sonos Blog today. The text of that blog post is being included here for your convenience:
Starting in May 2020, some of our oldest products will no longer receive software updates or new features. We want to explain why and your options.
When we first set out almost 20 years ago to invent the technology to easily listen to any song in any room, most of the ways we listen to music today did not exist. In fact, the first Sonos products were introduced before the first iPhone was announced and when Myspace still ruled social media.
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.
Since launching our first products, technology has advanced at an exponential rate; from streaming services and voice assistants to wireless networking and Bluetooth capabilities. Through all of this transformation, we have continued delivering new features via software updates. We’re extremely proud of the fact that we build products that last a long time, and that listeners continue to enjoy them. In fact, 92% of the products we’ve ever shipped are still in use today. That is unheard of in the world of consumer electronics. However, we’ve now come to a point where some of the oldest products have been stretched to their technical limits in terms of memory and processing power.
This coming May, these legacy products—our original Zone Players, Connect, and Connect:Amp (launched in 2006; includes versions sold until 2015), first-generation Play:5 (launched 2009), CR200 (launched 2009), and Bridge (launched 2007)—will no longer receive software updates or new features.
Today the Sonos experience relies on an interconnected ecosystem, giving you access to more than 100 streaming services, voice assistants, and control options like Apple AirPlay 2. Without new software updates, access to services and overall functionality of your sound system will eventually be disrupted, particularly as partners evolve their technology.
To help you through this transition, we’re providing two options:
Option 1: Continue using these legacy products, recognizing that your system will no longer receive software updates and new features.
Option 2: Trade up to a new Sonos product with a 30% credit for each legacy product you replace.
If you’re not sure if your products are affected, you can check in the System tab in your sonos.com-account
If you choose to participate in the trade up program, your legacy products will be put in Recycle Mode, a state that deletes personally identifiable information and prepares these products for e-recycling. Recycle Mode also protects unsuspecting people from buying legacy products that are approaching the end of their useful life and won’t provide the Sonos experience customers expect today. Recycle Mode will only apply to the legacy products listed above.
We ask that you take your legacy products to a nearby certified e-recycling facility. This is the most environmentally friendly way to recycle. That said, if there isn’t a facility in your area, we are happy to pay for you to ship your products back to Sonos for responsible recycling.
Ideally all our products would last forever, but for now we’re limited by the existing technology. Our responsibility here is threefold: build products that last a long time; continually look for ways to make our products more environmentally friendly through materials, packaging, and our supply chain and take responsibility for helping you through the transition once products near the end of their useful life.
We’ve always believed in freedom of choice, whether that means choosing a certain streaming service or way to control your listening experience. We hope the choices provided here—continuing to use these products without new software updates or trading up to our modern products—enable you to make the choice that’s right for you.
We are honored to have a place in your home and want to make sure that we help continue to bring the best experience we can, even when products reach the end of their useful life.
More information.
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Think this is disgraceful. You invest hundreds of pounds, me to the tune of 3k. Then sonos tells you half your kit over hlaf will basically start to not support any upgrades and finally I'm guessing stop working all together. Never mind.30% off how about a refund.
SONOS I'm disgusted
What happens if I buy a new computer or move to another country and need to set up my system again….will I not be able to get things working again?.
Please advise us on this issue Sonos
Sonos if you are reading this you have kicked your brand into touch amongst the customers that championed you for so many years.
They say no publicity is bad publicity - wrong!
Sonos you are a disgrace. This announcement is nothing more than Sonos trying to appease your new investors into believing you have a viable business
SONOS YOU JUST DESTROYED all of your loyal customers. Bye bye. Sell Sell SONOS stock hard
live owned Sonos products since the first shipment into the uk in January 2005 and have continued to add to that system over the years whilst also promoting Sonson to friends an family. Oh dear what have I done!
I even bought some Sonos Stock but thankfully saw the writing on the wall when they bricked my cr100s and I sold the stock
Sonos is finished in its current form. Investors are pointless if you have destroyed customer loyalty
Bye bye Sonos it was great while it lasted.
I'm not even bothering to read the previous 15 pages as I can guess that people are thinking the same as me.
Just received the email about my expensive play 5 gen 1 and connect amp both purchased in 2014 no longer being supported.
I also have 9, yes 9 Play 1s and a Boost. Yes big house.
This is completely disgusting behaviour, an obvious attempt at a cash grab. In an increasingly crowded market for connected speakers, my response to Sonos is to go and screw yourselves.
I will not spend another pound/euro on your hardware.
When the endless software nags annoy me too much or when you no doubt bork my system with a software update 'cos I haven't upgraded to new hardware I will sell my 9 Play 1' s and Boost on the second hand market.
Goodbye.
And just to add to my earlier comment......
What the hell were you thinking sending an email out titled:
'Your system needs attention'
What planet do you people live on?
The only thing that needs attention is the head of the money grabbing accountant whose idea this was and the board member that signed it off.
Some of my 9 Play 1's are approaching 5 years old do I need to sell these second hand now before they become irrelevant?
@Michael Arones, thanks for taking the time to write up such detailed questions. Several of these are questions that will be answered later this year when we have more to share...
I would strongly urge that such questions as Michael’s be addressed, specifically and completely, in a much-accelerated time-frame… Today, or this week, and very visibly.
Judging from the response in just several hours, it must be very clear to anyone and everyone that this has spiraled well out of control.
What happens if I buy a new computer or move to another country and need to set up my system again….will I not be able to get things working again?.
Please advise us on this issue Sonos
You’ll still be able to set your system up, and if you have any trouble, the support team will be happy to help you get it all working again.
In one announcement Sonos have sowed the seeds to their own bankruptcy.
no one will trust Sonos again
Curiously enough, the same day as this announcement from Sonos arrived in my inbox, I got the following email from Toyota.
END OF CAR SUPPORT
Dear Customer
In May 2020, Toyota will cease supporting your 2015 Toyota Corolla. While you will continue to be able to drive your car, we regret that your car may start to slow down and will not be able to be driven on new or upgraded roads and may not accept modern fuels. Even if you have more up to date cars in your family, as your cars all sit on the same driveway, these cars also will be unable to be driven on newer roads.
Yours
Toyota Support
That’s how ridiculous this is.
That is brilliant… really explains how awful this move is… I will never buy sonos again...
Like the rest of you, I received the EOL and upgrade notification. I have a Play5 that is impacted, and was told I could trade it in for 30% off of a Move? WTF? Not even a 1-to-1 swap from a component perspective.
So what system is everyone changing to? I think I'm done with Sonos.
I’m looking at Bluesound. They’re expensive, but hopefully supported for longer (but who knows these days). I have 3 connect zones that have just been trashed, and 3 play5’s (two of them paired with a Sub). I’ll probably keep the Play1’s + sub (for as long as Sonos deigns to support them) but transition out for my higher-end receivers currently connected to Sonos connects. What a way to alienate your customers. Amazing. Haven’t seen this level of stupidity since Gerald Ratner destroyed his own brand in the UK.
I’m still wondering how I’ll transition the family and friends (all of whom invested in the Sonos ecosystem on my recommendation) off Sonos. They’re not going to want to invest in something as expensive again. Google Chromecast audio’s would have been great, but Google (disclosure - I work there) stupidly cancelled them.
This is really sad news for all Sonos customers.
Most of us will now think twice before buying anything again, as we have learned that at any time, sooner or later, all our investments into Sonos system will vanish.
That implies that this was done arbitrary for no reason, and that would not be able to use the legacy devices at all past May. That’s not true.
Well, we can think further and, as the software evolves, some services will stop working on the old devices anyway. It will certainly not happen in May. But I can think that some years later same Spotify will stop backward compatibility on their API and it will stop working then.
Agreed on this. So that would be potentially 7-8 years of life, more/less depending on when you bought your device?
I don't think I am able to re-buy all my stuff every 5-10 years, especially considering the fact that Sonos keeps selling previous generation goods while already planning to start selling new generation in a month. And not mentioning, that lifetime of that previous gen speaker is twice shorter!
I don’t know that there is going to be end of support life annoucement every 5-10 years.based on this first annoucement. Hard to predict how fast the market will develop. I don’t think I really thought my Sonos devices would last as long as they have personally. I considered them to be computer like, and less like an AV system, so I expected hardware failures, features becoming obsolete, and dropped support much sooner than it did. Obviously, others didn’t look at it that way. I’m not saying I’m happy with looking at replace my units, I’m not. Just in perspective, I see it a little differently than most apparently.
Why couldn't you offer a kind of better, cost-effective solution to your customers than throwing away 70% of money spent on their systems?
Without knowing the cost to produce the products, it’s hard to say whether Sonos really could have or should have offered a better discount. Also, the percentage is based on what you buy, not what you’re trading in. The total savings could actually be greater than the original cost of what you’re trading in for some scenarios. Also, just my opinion, but being that you got years of use out of your speakers, it’s hard to say that money spent on your system was entirely thrown away.
I'm not asking for a bigger discount, but why not offer a new device that will, well, bridge between older firmware and a new one?
That could be a good solution for owners of lots of legacy products that still able to work. I see here two main reasons for not doing that: a) it will cost more hours on development of two firmware versions at the same time and b) most of users after the first frustration will still start slowly trading in old stuff.
From what I’ve seen on this board before, a lot of customers don’t like solutions like this that require them to buy something new for what they see as maintaining what they already have. I also don’t know feasible a bridge solution like this actually is. I know part of the aging of the old units isn’t just firmware/hardware, but the WiFi radios themselves are older.
I myself am quite new to Sonos, the oldest product in my system is Play1, which I bought 2 years ago, when Sonos One has just appeared, so I saved some bucks and bought a device that, as I see now, has a much more shorter lifetime, than One, that I decided not to buy because I don't have Alexa in my country.
So this is why I've decided to write here: there are currently Playbar and Playbase devices on sale by Sonos, that are much older than Beam, so probably their lifetime is also very limited?
Now we all know that we never know exactly how many years we have support for our products from Sonos.
You can have a general idea based on when the devices were first sold and what features they currently support. The playbar is rather old in comparison to the playbase and beam. It also doesn’t support airplay, which the other two do. just my opinion, but I also think there will be a new version of the playbar in a year or so.
What happens if I buy a new computer or move to another country and need to set up my system again….will I not be able to get things working again?.
Please advise us on this issue Sonos
This is a fantastic question.
**edit - Ryan just answered it. Thank you, Ryan.
Sonos you are a disgrace. This announcement is nothing more than Sonos trying to appease your new investors into believing you have a viable business
SONOS YOU JUST DESTROYED all of your loyal customers. Bye bye. Sell Sell SONOS stock hard
live owned Sonos products since the first shipment into the uk in January 2005 and have continued to add to that system over the years whilst also promoting Sonson to friends an family. Oh dear what have I done!
I even bought some Sonos Stock but thankfully saw the writing on the wall when they bricked my cr100s and I sold the stock
Sonos is finished in its current form. Investors are pointless if you have destroyed customer loyalty
Bye bye Sonos it was great while it lasted.
Complain to the CEO: Patrick.Spence@sonos.com
This is absolutely unacceptable both on customer service, sustainability and environmental factors.
Absolutely outraged and clearly profits over ethics here.
Complain and/or take your business elsewhere.
This throw away mentality is not only hurting users who have invested in Sonos - it’s one of the main contributing issues that’s having a negative effect on the planet. Such a shame that perfectly functioning products now look likely to become unusable in the short term.
The problem with further investment in the system is that this will probably be a never ending cycle of throw away and replace - where does it end?
This is NOT what I signed up to when buying into the Sonos system.
Watch your sales diminish Sonos.
This announcement is criminal.
Dear Sonos, you’re an absolute disgrace. I have held you up on a pedestal for over 10 years. I have showered you with thousands of hard earned dollars. I have recommended you to people in every opportunity that represented itself. I have given you out as gifts for birthdays and holidays.
And now you do this?
Dear Sonos, I will take that same fervor, that same passion and enthusiasm that I had for you, and flip it 180 degrees. I will never purchase you again. I will expend all my energy to tell friends to never buy you again or bother upgrading you.
Dear Sonos, I did not know you had a shelf-life back in 2007 when our relationship first began. You lied to me! How could you?
Dear Sonos, you betrayed me and every person that purchased you. You have cost all of us thousands, but you will lose millions in share price alone. You’ll never see the days of your IPO valuation again, and you know it.
Good bye Sonos!
The frequent Sonos updates were always a pain in the ass, they never brought me anything I was interested in. I hope stopping the support means also stopping the interuptions. You should however be ashamed that you try making your clients to dispose of still good working and very expensive hardware.
I will never buy Sonos again.
Stefaan
I think a major problem is that SONOS needs to better explain the specifics of the impact, the reasons for the impact on legacy systems, and the options going forward from here.
(1) What I am hearing is that they need to update the SONOS control app on the smart phone. And that changes to the app will require some matching changes to the software on the SONOS devices. And that they won’t make those needed matching changes to the legacy devices. (the functional impact is discussed later)
Is that a correct summary?
(a) It is not clear if the changes are not technically possible (lack of memory?) or if SONOS just don’t want to make that investment. It would be good to hear an answer to that.
(b) why is it not possible for the app to be programmed with a compatibility mode to work with legacy devices just as it does prior to the May 2020 cutoff?
(2) If I update a control app after May2020, what exactly is the impact on that app working with the legacy devices? Is there some guide as to what functionality might be lost? For example, perhaps only certain new streaming services may not be available, though streaming from my NAS based music collection would be OK.
Or it may be that even basic communication between unmatched app and devices would be lost (turning the legacy devices into expensive bricks)?
(3) If we do not update our SONOS smartphone/tablet control app after the May2020 cutoff, then the app will continue to work with our devices indefinitely after that point, though any newly discovered bugs will not be fixed. This can be accomplished by turning off the “Update Automatically” setting and not manually approving any app updates.
Is that a correct summary?
(4) The catch is that without new software updates, our frozen control app would no longer be able to support the newer devices, even with old functionality? SONOS statements imply that there is likely more lost than just new functionality (which many of us do not care about), but could impact current functionality.
Is that correct?
Would the frozen legacy control app be able to work with the newer “modern” SONOS devices, limited to old functionality? Would it matter whether the “modern” devices have newer software updates? It would be good to have a clear answer on that.
(5) Further, there is a possibility that SONOS will provide for download of the pre-May2020 control application for use on any new smart device, should I change smart phone or tablet in the future.(or need to delete/reload in a recovery situation).
Is that correct, and when would we see that as an available download?
(6) Is it possible to use two different smart devices, one with the frozen legacy app and one with the current supported app. In that case, I should be able to control and update “modern” SONOS devices from one while using the legacy app to control, at least, the legacy devices and perhaps even all my SONOS devices (with old function scope)?
(7) SONOS is saying all of this is driven by the major music streaming servers changing their interfaces. It is not clear if they are talking about control interfaces or about streaming protocols.
If the impact of the streaming servers changes is a control interface used only by the SONOS control app, than SONOS should be able to isolate that impact to the control app and still maintain backwards compatibility with the SONOS devices. Correct? Or does the SONOS device need to work with that same changed streaming service control interface?
If the impact is directly to the software in the SONOS network which is doing the streaming, then only that streaming device needs to be modern. The streaming SONOS device should be able to forward that music content to the other SONOS players/speakers using the old protocols. All of my devices have te ability to stream from the server, but I gather for any particular music stream, only one handles that streaming and passes the content to the rest (in a synchronized fashion).
This is an important point since, if true, you would only need to ensure that there is one “modern” SONOS device, in the network, for each different streaming source, in order to handle any streaming interface issues. I only use one source at a time, so I would only need one “modern” device. (I am making some educated guesses about the overall design of the SONOS network).
Is there validity to what I am saying?
**************************************
The customers just need to better understanding of the situation and what alternate paths we have going forward.
Doing so can be a big win for both SONOS and their customers
**************************************
@Michael Arones, thanks for taking the time to write up such detailed questions. Several of these are questions that will be answered later this year when we have more to share. For people who keep their legacy devices and have a fully legacy system, or maybe mixed with modern, we don’t expect any immediate impact from ending the software updates. These systems will continue to work as they do today, or in May, but will not receive future updates. As mentioned before, changes that are made to technology in the future, particularly by music service and voice partners, can cause access to those services or features to be disrupted. This would be mostly in connection protocol on the back end, not just visual changes in their apps.
@Ryan S or if not feasible with a sophisticated software solution you develop a new cheaper hardware component that could offload one or more legacy units putting them into “slave mode” still utilizing all other features of the legacy components such as speaker/amplifier etc. There is also an environmental issue here with loads of unnecessary electronical waste.
What about this situation:
Keeping system in legacy mode.
Controller in iOS gets auto uppdated.
Wouldn’t that make the Controller unusable since it’s an outdated system or will there be a legacy Controller App?
Unfortunately I can’t search the thread, this is probably already adressed.
Again, I’ve got 6 ZP80s + 2 Play 5s (version 1) dotted around a large Victorian house connected to existing home cinema Av receivers, portable hifi, bathroom ceiling speakers etc. No real need to upgrade because they all work fine if I want to play music around the house.
Even with the discount, upgrading (if you can call it that) to the Port would cost £280 a piece and the new Play 5s £350. How long before those are classed as legacy?
Access to music has changed in recent years as well as the type of music I want to listen to, many more devices now offer airplay 2, I can stream YouTube on smart TVs as well as other options available.
My existing Sonos setup just works. I don’t really need any new features to my existing Sonos setup to improve on what I’ve got or want it to do.
Blowed if I going to invest mega bucks on a whole new setup for it to be ‘trashed’ again by Sonos in the few years
I was sceptical about the trade up offer in the last quarter of 2019 and wondered where it was going ……. BOOM …. there we have it.
I like many others bought a heap of sonos in the beginning (2009) , then my dad did the same as he loved it so much he kitted his whole house out with it in 2010. Mainly connects and connect Amps we both have.
i understand that like early Apple products and windows software things move on and that current technologies can’t work with older ones but surely you can’t prevent any ones new sonos equipment from being upgraded with new software and not able to work with the legacy products. I have a mix of legacy and new and for me to trade up it’s going to cost approximately £1500 …… I’ve just spent £400 on a sonos beam in the last 12 months!!!! As for my dad he’ll be around £2K !!!!
It seems a great way to create extra revenue!!! I wish my business was this clever 
I’m sure there’s plenty others which will agree that there should be a bigger trade up discount !!!
I like many others in the beginning actually acted as salesmen for Sonos , spreading the word to friends and family who actually bought your products and supported you and this is our thanks.
Complain to the CEO: Patrick.Spence@sonos.com
This is absolutely unacceptable both on customer service, sustainability and environmental factors.
Absolutely outraged and clearly profits over ethics here.
Complain and/or take your business elsewhere.
Thank you.
Email sent.
If you guys go somewhere else, what speakers would you be purchasing? What other brands continue to support their speakers forever? I know Bose does not. Just curious, as I recently purchased a Sonos Beam, Sub and 2 Gen 2 One’s. I did not see anything out their that had similar support to what Sonos has and if there is something better that will be supported long term would like to know about it.
I think my current system, when it does go obsolete will continue playing - right? Hopefully, soon Sonos will be releasing a Playbar with HDMI and Atmos, but who knows....
A desperate move by what I assume is a desperate company. Bankrupt by end of 2020 is my call. Picked up my first piece of Sonos kit in 2004. Sorry way to see things end. As with this announcement, its sell all my Sonos gear time (legacy or new). Hopefully have some local buyers for the subs and heavier pieces of kit.
