Update on the Sonos App from Patrick Spence

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed or been disappointed by the recent changes in how we can control our Sonos speakers. It used to be really convenient to manage my speakers remotely, even when I wasn’t on the same WiFi network. Whether I was at work, out of town, or just in another part of the house with a different WiFi connection, I could still add songs to the queue, adjust settings, and generally control my speakers without any issues.

However, it seems like this functionality is no longer available. Now, unless I’m connected to the same WiFi as my speakers, I’m pretty much locked out of controlling them altogether. This has been a bit of a bummer for me because I loved the flexibility of being able to manage my speakers from anywhere.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Does anyone know if there’s a way to regain this remote control capability, or if Sonos has mentioned any plans to bring it back? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Thanks!

I bought a book but I only have part of the pages, Sonos app is the same

The big problem with those fortnightly instalment delivery products is after the first half dozen they usually stop being available 😂 

I bought a book but I only have part of the pages, Sonos app is the same

Well, let’s see - we’re not there yet…! 😁

Currently, every time I see an update for Sonos in the App Store, I think ‘blimey, where did those two weeks go’  

From the Q3 Conference Call:

“Erik Woodring- Morgan Stanley

Patrick, I know you guys are alluding to the $20 million to $30 million of costs in the near term. I'm just wondering if you'd take a step back and think about the potential reputational damage that you could have from this app update. Could that be longer lasting and more kind of cost intensity than just $20 million to $30 million? I mean if you go through, I'm sure you have a number of message boards, there's a lot of backlash. And so I'm just wondering if there's a longer-term plan here in place outside of fixing the app and promoting. What else you have in store to try to get those customers that have either been loyal customers or new customers that were potentially considering Sonos products to actually come back after this? And then I have a follow-up.

Patrick Spence, CEO- Sonos

Yes. Thanks, Erik. So I think the key is to address the pain points that we have right now and those customers that are having issues with the new app for sure. But remember, we're not standing still on the innovation front. So we have 2 major new products that we're pushing out again to get-- make sure that we're in a position where the app issues are behind us. As we do that and as we launch those, we launch other products we have planned, we do our day-to-day execution in the channels and in marketing and all our other areas, people will be able to see the products. They'll experience our products. And I'm confident that with the road map wehave, with the innovation we have coming, that this will be just one chapter in our long history. And so we do feel like the $20 million to $30 million is what it takes to address the short-term pain. And that with everything we have coming, we'll be able to ultimately address that pain and then get back to a place of customers raving about Sonos”

When asked about reputational damage and how to make it right with existing customers, he immediately went to new products.  This is not the same company it was when I started buying their products 10 years ago.  The focus is new products and growth.  Developing a long standing relationship with customers is secondary.  Sonos products will soon be like phones - get a new one every 2 years, the old ones don’t work as well.  If I ever buy another Sonos product, I know what I’m getting - not a speaker that will last but a junky piece of tech that will be good for only a couple years.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sonos-is-failing-and-millions-of-devices-could-go-with-it-why-open-source-audio-is-our-only-hope/

Interesting viewpoint; although the author has an axe to grind these are questions anyone considering material investment in any system needs to ask.  

 That’s why I still use SqueezeBox.  WiiM Pro Plus & Ultra can be SqueezeBox Players and my Touch still works it’s magic.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel when all it takes is for the smart front end and the generic speaker side to both have analog line level jacks. Signal voltages don’t need any more protocols to communicate.

I always thought the play 1 units would have moved from good to great with a line in jack; I believe recent Sonos speakers do have these. On the other hand, new Echo devices are usually stripped of  audio out jacks, reducing their versatility just to save some pennies.

Interesting, although in his desire to promote his AudioPile idea he has overlooked that Matter which has open source libraries for hardware of all sizes and supports most of the connectivity he’s wanting are looking into an audio casting specification. They already have a video casting specification and there are products on the market using it.

Matter is a unified, open-source application-layer connectivity standard built to enable developers and device manufacturers to connect and build reliable, and secure ecosystems and increase compatibility among connected home devices.

https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip

There is even working code for building the video casting example.

Who are members of the CSA defining the Matter/Thread specifications? Well oddly all it includes all the current closed platform manufacturers, Amazon, Google, Apple, Sonos he is complaining about and extends across companies from the entire supply chain.

It’s almost as if they recognised that the expensive and duplicated effort they put into their systems it is better for them if they make things open and concentrate on selling services and content and devices without needing full end to end single vendor control and investment.

Personally I’d prefer a Matter solution over yet another open source platform. Mix and match endpoint devices and they work with your preferred controller app.

I have used, contributed to and been a supporter of open source since the mid 90’s when I battled through the minefield of hardware support to install the first Slackware release. That carried into my working life, where most of  what I work with wouldn’t exist or have been possible without open source solutions.

I used to use Squeezebox and it was my first multi room & multi location (via vpn) music system before I bought my first Sonos devices back in 2007.

I’m glad Logitech kept it open when they bought it and it is continuing now Logitech aren’t interested.

I do keep looking at it, but for me the client server model with everything running through it gives an extra server I’m not interested in maintaining and a single point of failure I don’t want. It can be powerful and flexible, but in reality from the repos it still looks like there are only a handful of people maintaining it and many of the plugins are single person development. Without being able to interest new developers to contribute it suffers the same issue as many projects where it’s only sustainable while the developer stays.

Unfortunately in the open source side of audio there appears to be a lot of re-invent the wheel, so projects get smaller dedicated followers, but don’t reach the tipping point of being the majority solution.

The most visible recent example I’ve seen is rather than doing something with LMS the Home assistant team have decided to build their own audio solution with Music Assistant.

Mpd has it’s own various server and client offerings, then there’s Plex, Emby, Jellyfin etc all trying to integrate audio delivery that suits, in the primary instance, the developers needs.