We wanted to take a moment to address concerns regarding our new app that launched in May. At Sonos, delivering an exceptional experience is paramount to all that we do. Unfortunately, your experiences over the past several weeks have fallen short of our commitment to you.
Today, our CEO Patrick Spence published a letter that includes a detailed update on the progress we’ve been making and plans going forward. You can read the full letter here.
We sincerely appreciate your patience and continued support. We are working hard to earn back your trust and are more committed than ever to delivering a consistently great Sonos experience for everyone.
Thank you all for your patience, Your Sonos Team
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No way in hell I am ever buying anything else from Sonos again. New app is broken on so many levels that it would never go through testing phase in any half decent company. Even the handling of the situation was pathetic ,shows complete disregard of the customers and really poor leadership. CEO should immediately step down and re-evaluate his career choices. Destroying second strong brand (Blackberry,Sonos) can't be a coincidence...
Look, there’s a lot we can lay at the feet of leadership in this debacle. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to blame Patrick Spence for BlackBerry’s demise. Between technology advances, carriers charging extra for BES access/active sync etc, and advances in MAM vs MDM, BlackBerry didn’t stand a chance at surviving intact.
That being said, I think there’s still a market for a 100% privacy/security focused phone hardware/OS vendor, and people are eager to move to it, even if it means moving away from Apple.
The Sonos debacle? Totally this chump’s fault.
Spence was witness to what happened at Blackberry as MD of Europe and then Global head of sales, bot not the one in charge. So certainly in a position to understand what was happening even if he had no direct control over it and it would have been a good learning ground for what not to do.
We wanted to take a moment to address concerns regarding our new app that launched in May. At Sonos, delivering an exceptional experience is paramount to all that we do. Unfortunately, your experiences over the past several weeks have fallen short of our commitment to you.
Today, our CEO Patrick Spence published a letter that includes a detailed update on the progress we’ve been making and plans going forward. You can read the full letter here.
We sincerely appreciate your patience and continued support. We are working hard to earn back your trust and are more committed than ever to delivering a consistently great Sonos experience for everyone.
Thank you all for your patience, Your Sonos Team
I'd like to return all $2,000 of my sonos speakers for a full refund. Where can I send and when can I get my money back for a system that you 100% effed up. Whoever us responsible for this trash app should be fired.
Every Sonos customer deserves a 50% refund on their speakers. . What a train wreck the app is. You took a perfectly good app and turned it into 100% useless trash
Every Sonos customer deserves a 50% refund on their speakers. . What a train wreck the app is. You took a perfectly good app and turned it into 100% useless trash
You said the same things four years ago. But you stuck around, and all was well. Give it another month or so and you might find all is at peace again.
As I wrote in my one-star review of the new Sonos app in the Apple store, the product manager for the app should be fired (if they have not been already). I have been an enthusiastic evangelist for Sonos since buying my first speakers. Now, based on the disastrous app that was released in May, I am actively warning family and friends away from Sonos. I have spent hours trying to resolve issues created by the new app and I have yet to be able to play a single playlist created on my Mac through the Sonos app. The premature release of the new, highly-flawed app has me questioning whether I should abandon the Sonos platform altogether.
I can't get my Sonos to play a full song, let aline a play list! I went from a life long sonos customer to wanting to toss 2k in speakers into the trash
Every Sonos customer deserves a 50% refund on their speakers. . What a train wreck the app is. You took a perfectly good app and turned it into 100% useless trash
You said the same things four years ago. But you stuck around, and all was well. Give it another month or so and you might find all is at peace again.
I'm pretty sure I've never written a review of Sonos before. Because it worked 99% of the time, now I have a usleaa system. So there's that. Where would any customer go who has at least 2k in speakers, thankfully only 2k.
As I wrote in my one-star review of the new Sonos app in the Apple store, the product manager for the app should be fired (if they have not been already). I have been an enthusiastic evangelist for Sonos since buying my first speakers. Now, based on the disastrous app that was released in May, I am actively warning family and friends away from Sonos. I have spent hours trying to resolve issues created by the new app and I have yet to be able to play a single playlist created on my Mac through the Sonos app. The premature release of the new, highly-flawed app has me questioning whether I should abandon the Sonos platform altogether.
I can't get my Sonos to play a full song, let aline a play list! I went from a life long sonos customer to wanting to toss 2k in speakers into the trash
Well that’s unlikely to be Sonos App related. The Sonos App is just a ‘remote’ and not a ‘player’. Once playback begins from within the App, you can close the App and even power off the mobile device. Any queued tracks should continue to play, that’s also the case with 3rd-party Apps like SonoPhone etc. and because those Apps seem to be working okay, then I’m not sure why your speakers are stopping playback, unless you have connection issues to them across the LAN/WAN - Maybe try a reboot of your local network router and see if that simple step might resolve your issue.
This is what I did in 2020 that has worked brilliantly for me since then and what those users that have a few Sonos units with line in jacks can resort to today as soon as the new app allows full access to the line in set up: Use the app to configure all line in jacks to autoplay, including on all grouped Sonos speakers.
Once that is done, the excellent Sonos hardware is able to move to dumb mode, not needing any Sonos app, to play music from other sources connected to the line in jacks via cheap RCA cable. That way you are isolated from Sonos software shenanigans in future. As dumb hardware Sonos can still sound like a proper HiFi set up, and there are many viable smart front ends now that can be used to drive Sonos such that the existing Sonos investment is protected till the Sonos hardware dies a natural death, when it may be replaced by third party HiFI hardware that is also run in dumb mode..
In this approach, the radios in the Sonos units may even be turned off.
Alternatively, wait for Sonos to fix things, to whatever time line Sonos achieves, and then forget about what Sonos has put you through, till the next time Sonos does a rinse and repeat. As some apologists for Sonos keep suggesting here.
This approach will not work for those that also need local libraries to deliver music. On the other hand, while I can use my local library via a full featured S1 that has remained operational all this time, I hardly use it because I can just as well use Spotify directed to dumb Sonos hardware, via casting to the smarter front ends in place now. Also because these front ends have album art showing for music playing, something that Sonos does not offer as a feature for play from local libraries. Or from Spotify, for that matter.
Generalising on the preceding post: In 2020 I also realised that buying quality HiFi with a bundled smart controller - be it Sonos or any other - is a dumb thing to do. Far more sensible to buy the HiFi for sound quality and reliability, and use third party smart streamers that don’t have fancy speakers in the same box. The HiFi can then be a decades lasting investment, while the smart front ends can be changed even every three years as that tech progresses. Because not having all the downstream HiFi components in it, those front ends can be very low priced. The now expired Chromecast audio or Echo units come to mind, but there are many such now.
Generalising on the preceding post: In 2020 I also realised that buying quality HiFi with a bundled smart controller - be it Sonos or any other - is a dumb thing to do. Far more sensible to buy the HiFi for sound quality and reliability, and use third party smart streamers that don’t have fancy speakers in the same box. The HiFi can then be a decades lasting investment, while the smart front ends can be changed even every three years as that tech progresses. Because not having all the downstream HiFi components in it, those front ends can be very low priced. The now expired Chromecast audio or Echo units come to mind, but there are many such now.
This is very much inline with my thinking, @Kumar, and I’ll add one wrinkle. If you’re after a great user experience, you need to pay someone who delivers great music software.
Not everyone demands a great UX, and those folks may be fine with the bundleware shipped with their streamer. But it is unrealistic to expect a hardware company to deliver fabulous software.
Is one of the main reasons I chose Yamaha as my replacement. While there is MusicCast built in, the devices work and are controllable without it, so can add a streamer when needed. Same principle I use with my TV. When the inbuilt streaming stops working or doesn’t do what I want, add an external player and carry on.
I can even say no to firmware updates, run the devices on different versions and everything just works. Would you believe, they only need one app to use with the v1 and v2 musiccast devices due to versioned on device apis?
I’ve turned all my players into openhome renderers with bubbleupnp server for per device queues with Rigelean. At the moment I use a mix of Rigelean for it’s music focused ui, and the musiccast app.
If you’re after a great user experience, you need to pay someone who delivers great music software.
Not everyone demands a great UX, and those folks may be fine with the bundleware shipped with their streamer. But it is unrealistic to expect a hardware company to deliver fabulous software.
For those that are able to pursue such solutions after having knowledge of them, for sure. There is an analogy there from the old days of HiFi separates.
What I have found that just using Spotify on my phone, selecting the music/playlist I want to listen to and then casting that to an Echo Show 8 wired to Sonos serves my needs for a music play UX. And when I am vacuuming or feeling lazier than usual, I can do this via a voice command to the Echo, asking it to play, usually from remembered play lists.
In my case it also helps to have accepted that there is nothing audible to be heard from a pursuit of higher data streams as are used for Hi Res. Any benefit gets lost in the ambient sound floor levels of even a quiet room, even when heard from better speakers than Sonos. Quality headphones may show the benefit, but since I don’t use them, that does not bear in my case.
I just noticed, with my lounge room playbase and play 1s, that the ambient setting no longer works for the play 1 surrounds. I like the playbase to do the heavy lifting up front. I can turn them down but shouldn't need to?
“ Sonos owners have been in their own special circle of hell since mid-May, when a now-infamous update to the Sonos app and the platform as a whole went very, very wrong. Not helping matters is that the upgrade-that-wasn’t has hit folks in different ways. Some have reported few problems. Others have serious issues getting their Sonos system — which until now had been mostly rock solid in its ability to play music wirelessly throughout a house — to do anything at all.”
“ You wouldn’t be wrong in feeling like your Sonos system has held you hostage a little bit. Sure, you’re not actually tied down to anything and can walk out the door anytime, but you’ll be poorer for it. Or you can stick things out and hope for the best.”
“Customers are going to grumble. A lot. And very loudly. They’re not wrong to do so. And what other choice do they have? Sonos setups aren’t cheap, even in their smallest iteration. And unless you don’t mind setting money on fire, you’re likely just going to ride this one out and hope things get better sooner rather than later. But until then, everyone’s being held hostage by a broken system they want to love again.”
Copy/pasted from the excellent linked article that sums it all up very well, for those that don’t want to be reminded of all the gory detail!
OK so CEO wrote some message but nothing has changed! The app is still TERRIBLE!!! when will they fix it already :(
I feel like this letter would land better if they send owners some 50% off vouchers and 12 months free Sonos HD Radio.
Hmmmm, 12 months free....but during that 12 months your SONOS product doesn't work anyhow.
Hello everyone,
We wanted to take a moment to address concerns regarding our new app that launched in May. At Sonos, delivering an exceptional experience is paramount to all that we do. Unfortunately, your experiences over the past several weeks have fallen short of our commitment to you.
Today, our CEO Patrick Spence published a letter that includes a detailed update on the progress we’ve been making and plans going forward. You can read the full letter here.
We sincerely appreciate your patience and continued support. We are working hard to earn back your trust and are more committed than ever to delivering a consistently great Sonos experience for everyone.
Thank you all for your patience, Your Sonos Team
I would like a working product which I am entitled to under Australian consumer law.
Managing a company during a crisis is undoubtedly challenging. I’ve followed the timeline of updates from CEO Patrick Spence, and I recognize that the team at Sonos is working hard to navigate through this difficult situation.
However, from the perspective of a long-time customer, the efforts so far don’t feel sufficient. Publishing a timeline and closing local support offices, firing employees, while understandable, don’t address the core issues that customers like myself are facing. Sonos, it’s time to step up instead!
I own five Sonos devices (an amp, three One speakers, and a One SL) and have been a loyal Sonos user for over seven years. Until recently, my experience with the system has been nothing short of excellent. Unfortunately, everything changed with the release of the new app. Now, none of my devices are recognized by the system. I’ve followed all the troubleshooting suggestions—factory resets, router resets, hardwired connections, WiFi connections—yet the problem persists. Occasionally, a device may be detected, but an error inevitably occurs, rendering the system unusable.
It’s been three months without music, and despite investing countless hours trying to resolve this, I’m left feeling frustrated and unsupported. It’s disheartening to see Sonos continuing to advertise new products on the website while existing customers struggle without a solution. If you can send emails promoting new devices, why not communicate more effectively with those of us who are still waiting for the app to function properly?
As a once-enthusiastic Sonos advocate, I need to be confident in your products before considering any future purchases. Please fix the app, bring back the old app, whatever and be more supportive to your loyal customers—only then will I consider adding something by Sonos ever again.
Again, for those of you in the back, all they had to do was rename and re-release 16.1 as a branch while they ironed out this new Jackson Pollock UI/UX.
That they didn’t and won’t says they don’t care about you. Even you Ken G.
I don’t expect them to care, but maybe I’m old fashioned in that I do expect them to not lie and say the app will have the same functionality as the old one to entice me to install. Then take 6 months and probably way longer to not just fix the never ending stream of bugs but also get back to feature parity with 16.1.
Fire your software engineering leadership. The Sonos app has been bad for a long time and is now totally unusable. You don’t have the right engineering leadership. Fire them and start over. The hardware is amazing - I am a long time Sonos customer with 10 devices. I’m going to sell them all because I can’t use them with your software.
Fire your software engineering leadership. The Sonos app has been bad for a long time and is now totally unusable. You don’t have the right engineering leadership. Fire them and start over. The hardware is amazing - I am a long time Sonos customer with 10 devices. I’m going to sell them all because I can’t use them with your software.
Thank you for adding this, I have spent days with this * release just to get the answer from support: “you have a corporate firewall…. THAT’S your problem!”
