Sonos Official

Update on the Sonos App from Patrick Spence

Related content:CommunitySonos

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 25, 2024
986 replies
53971 views

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

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V

Veeper

Prominent Collaborator I

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.

AMPx2, One SLx6, Play5x2, SUBx2, Play1x2, Move, Roam (Yuck), ARC, PlayBar, Beam, SYMFONISKx2, Awful New App.

sigh

Prodigy II

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.

He did a podcast a couple of years ago about it

https://www.fastcompany.com/90772455/sonos-ceo-on-the-lessons-from-the-rise-and-fall-of-blackberry

D

DRCNY

Lyricist III

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'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.

D

DRCNY

Lyricist III

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

R

Rhonny

Prodigy III

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.

D

DRCNY

Lyricist III

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

D

DRCNY

Lyricist III

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.

Ken_Griffiths

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.

K

Kumar

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.

K

Kumar

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.

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