End of Software Updates for Legacy Products

Absolutely…. In anticipation of this type of action, I have been experimenting with Chromecast Audio and built in Chromecast with Play 5 Gen 1, ZP90 and my new AV receiver - and it can work very well. Not sure about playing in sync etc, as I don’t use this facility, but for my basic streaming from my NAS it works well. The only way of future proofing is to disconnect the software side (increasingly cheap) from the quality hardware (which will last for decades).

Much, much better for the environment, too...

Could not agree more with this post

@MrSwadge thanks for the link to @John McCabe link to http://strobe.audio being an opensource geek using Linux for my PC and Laptop, and LineageOs on my phone and tablet with lots of Raspberry Pis I am going to have a serious look at strobe.audio and consider flogging the Sonos stuff.

This is the most important thing. I didn’t buy in to Sonos initially because I was looking for an all bells and whistles smart system, I was looking for a wifi connected set of speakers that provided great quality sound. This announcement asks everyone now to make a choice of whether they want to just have that sound system, or future updates, because no-one is going to be able to have both without setting aside regular amounts of money over the years.

I have Sonos play:1s which no doubt will also become obsolete in the next few years, as well as my play:3s. Not many years after that my Playbar will become “legacy”.

This is a timebomb problem for Sonos users and a wakeup call. I think all of us now need to recognise that unless we’re willing to fund a quite unsustainable method of re-buying newer models of Sonos’ products, that there will be a point where either we have to accept that all our system can do is play music that somehow finds its way there (assuming that connected apps don’t simply stop working as they themselves update their APIs and services), either because Sonos doesn't have a sustainable business model outside of making existing customers rebuy its hardware, or because we won’t give in to that practice.

….and what about Play 3’s and original Play 1’s?  When will these become obsolete?  They are older than 2015 which seems to be the cut-off for this announcement (Play 1: 2013, Play 3: 2011).

You really need to be much clearer about this……

…...I’m not buying anything from Sonos until you are clear. 

Well it looks like it’s all been said already on here…..I think your shares on the market will soon start to take a nosedive after this little upset with all your customers you used to have at the beginning of this year.

And i’m one of them that went out and added to my already very expensive collection of sonos equipment over Christmas as a treat to myself, which may as well be returned on there 30 day returns policy with not being able to update them after May 2020 if i want to keep my (so called) now out of date equipment working. 

Silly Silly Sonos ….could your day get any better.

Share Price down 6% since Jan 3rd and after yesterday’s announcement.  Not only screwing Customers, but investors too.

This is were the rot starts … we are all personally hacked off but now the brand and company and the shareholders and the market start to get tarnished. 

From Sonos website under the ‘Reasons to invest’ section:

Home sound system expansion drives sustainable financial model

Repeat purchases support the sustainability of our financial model. Existing households represented 38% of new product registrations in fiscal 2017. These customers are not replacing products. They are adding to their Sonos systems.

Think they might need to change that!!

If Sonos were serious about keeping customers who invested a lot of money in their kit happy…..they would find a way to not make obsolete kit that might only be 5 years old.

I would suggest they provide a way before May to enable customers with such kit to ensure they never fall foul of an accidental upgrade - remove any reminders to me and let the kit continue for as long as those streaming services work.

Have to say the wording of this letter and the paltry trade-in would only serve to make me shop elsewhere in the future.

Sonos: over to you: respond well to the outrage you must sense amongst customers to regain trust and affection, or chose to die as a business.

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. 

I too am very disappointed, but not suprised, in the recent announcement, over the years controllers have been going obsolete, my original Sonos hardware controller went ‘obsolete’ years ago, at least two Android devices have gone ‘obsolete’ in the last year or two, on one the Sonos app stopped working altogether and the second tells me the OS is no longer supported everytime I open the Sonos app.

I bought a sound system and expect such to last as long as the hardware, to be made obsolete by software is infuriating and scandalously wasteful of resources and the creation of waste products that the non-tech world is trying to avoid, Sonos’ ‘Sustainability Report’ is a pitiful joke.

Much as I loved the Sonos system when it all functioned I lost faith in it when it started telling me I need to replace controllers and now they tell me I need to replace most of the speakers too. I will keep it as is until something breaks it or the hardware fails then I shall look elsewhere, I will not be buying any further Sonos products.

A company that has so little regard for its customers and the environment does not deserve to succeed.

HI … My speakers were purchased 4.5 years ago!!! for £700.00. 4.5 years of use to be told they will be practically obsolete!!! Am i missing something here? If the assistant had informed us before we handed over our well earned cash that our purchase would be practically outdated and redundant within 5 years we would have never purchased them. I thought we were purchasing a pair of music speakers that would last a very long time. A Pair of speakers for goodness sake! I do not want a 30% discount, I want to purchase my so called upgrade for 30% of its value!! Removing the IT jargon and spelling it out plain and simple does anyone else feel dumbfounded and gobsmacked that this can happen? 

This is a disgrace. It’s bad enough that Sonos are forcing loyal customers to “Tradeup” products that were only purchased a couple of years ago, but when there aren’t even products to “Tradeup” to, then what are we supposed to do?!

I rely on the “Bridge” to fill the gaps in their woeful built-in wifi, and the “Connect” to be able to integrate Sonos with my living room Surround Sound setup. Neither of these two products has a replacement which I can see, and even if they did it would cost me hundreds of pounds to simply carry on as I am.

The patronising email I received from support which didn’t answer any of the questions, was the icing on the cake.

I’m afraid to say that I think this is the final alarm-bell to signify that we have made a massive mistake investing in what was supposed to be a more future-proof approach to home audio systems. Sadly I’m not even going to be able to sell any of it on, because it will now all either be redundant landfill or the secondhand market will be now flooded with unwanted Sonos gear which everybody is trying to offload before it too gets written off as obsolete. This is all obviously assuming that the share price doesn’t tank so much that they go under completely!

Gutted to hear about this this morning. It encompasses a good portion of my Sonos system; 2xPlay5Gen1, 1xZP120, 2xBridge (1 is a spare). Worse than that is now I’m conscious the rest of my system (4xPlay1, 1xPlaybase, 1xSub) now has a definite service life. I only wish I could back 6 months and stop myself purchasing the 5.1 system for the living room.

Disgraceful approach Sonos. Great hardware but your software and business sense has gone out the window. Embracing the throw away generation with both arms it seems. I work in software so can appreciate the challenges of running modern code with limited processing resources. However, I also know with software there are always options and that you as a company have obviously decided that it’s not worth investing in those options. Let’s get the plebs to ditch their old speakers and come running back to buy new. 

Will see how this plays out over the next several months but unless the situation improves that will be end of my Sonos purchases. Maybe I can donate my kit to a museum... 

I’m absolutely disgusted to find that overnight Sonos can scrap most of my music system.  I have been an ardent supporter of this technology since it first came out and have invested significantly in installing the system around my home.  It may be a few years old now, but all works perfectly and simply declaring it dead appears not only a cyncial attempt to generate more revenues, but also significantly out of line with general world-wide thinking at present on unnecessary waste.  I absolutely agree with comments above that this is a disgrace and suggest urgent reconsideration to retain customer loyalty.