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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

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

You must be one of the lucky ones I cannot get the app to even open 4 sonos products now not working I open the app click on Gt Britain and that's as far as I can get will not let me press accept not sure what else I can do .


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

You must be one of the lucky ones I cannot get the app to even open 4 sonos products now not working I open the app click on Gt Britain and that's as far as I can get will not let me press accept not sure what else I can do .

Make sure you have scrolled right down to the bottom if that’s where the Accept button is (try it a few times) to press Acccept.

if that doesn’t work, then on your iPhone (assuming it’s iOS), go to Settings - Display and Brightness - Display Zoom, and set it to Default. Also reduce the Text Size to smallest, temporarily. Then go back into the app and see if you can now Accept.


I live in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and I loved my Sonos system until after the latest update. Since then all my systems can’t reconnect to each other again (Move, Sub-Mini, SL one (R and L), Beam). I am totally frustrated about what has happened and no longer enjoying my Sonos system. How can this be resolved and when???


I’ll keep it short even if the support told me to forget about it :

Gonic / Airsonic / Subsonic integration please.

Or let me restore to S1 so that I can use it again.


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

Appreciate you owning the issue and trying to fix it.

i spent 4 ½ hours on the phone yesterday with Sonos trying to get my Sonos to work

sonos boost soundbar and 11 speakers that will not sync or work! Couldn’t fix it and then gave me an appointment with a level two tech on August 8 !!!
my Sonos relationship is a love/hate one. It’s a fantastic product when and if it works, when it doesn’t which is frequent it’s horrible 


I think the Sonos CEO should be fired by the board for gross incompetence. As I’ve posted elsewhere, the most recent updates in mid July caused my Local Library to stop working - again - rendering my investment of over $8000 in equipment and installation services for our whole-house music system only about half as useful as it was before. We own decades of purchased music, significant parts of which are not available via streaming, although at present we are working around the issue with a Spotify playlist that I transferred in there using Soundiiz.

Just a quick back of the envelope calculation on the amount of value Sonos has destroyed with the latest updates:

  • Let’s conservatively estimate that each Sonos customer averages an investment of $3000. From the other posts I’ve seen, that’s low, so quite defensible.
  • Now consider the recent estimates that Sonos has about 15 million customers.
  • That represents a total customer capital investment of $45 Billion USD - with a B.
  • Not everyone uses Local Library, but let’s estimate that 25% of customers do, and that each customer now gets half the utility from their investment that they did before, reducing its value by half.
  • Thus over $5 Billion USD in customer investment has been destroyed - but can be restored simply by fixing the bugs that preclude Local Library from working (even using the network share workaround from April for the new app).

Of course the board will care more about customer retention and its impact on subscriber revenue. How many of the 15 million customers will abandon Sonos and stop subscribing? Hard to say, but the longer this issue persists, the larger that number will be. And the cost to get those customers back will greatly exceed whatever it might cost to just FIX THE DANG ISSUE.

Why is this not the single most important task for the software engineering group? Why are they not working shifts, day and night and weekends too, until it is fixed? I’ve worked leading software engineering and/or product management groups for products in the B2B space, and I just can’t conceive of how this situation continues to exist.

Mike Gilpin

Managing VP

Gartner


Since the option to switch to s1 isn’t listed in the letter does that mean it’s not coming back? Could someone from Sonos clarify? 


I haven’t even watched the video, I am not able to get service on the phone in a reasonable amount of time, I can no longer access my extensive music library still, I cannot access all of my playlists on Apple Music through the app, my system is only usable on Apple Music Streaming but only half of what I used to, cannot get service and cannot figure out how to get my music library back. Service was what Sonos used to provide, I guess since they are the only game in town they can screw all their customers and force them to buy a new system, I have been out shopping at various stores that provide Sonos systems and many of the people selling their products are not even aware that Sonos has a problem and they are continuing to try and sell them. I do not have time in the day to sit on hold and wait for a service person to answer and then go through another hour and a half trying to fix my system. Thank you CEO Patrick.


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

Thiank for acknowledging the problem almost 80 days into the frustrating and lack luster experience this new app has caused. 80 days! And now you want us to wait more for a “fix”. Roll back. Put this app in beta and bring back the old app until you get something that is tested and a meaningful upgrade out. Take your time with that beta and stop ruining our summer. Did I mention it was really bad timing. 

 

“How likely are you to recommend Sonos to a friend or family member?”
The answer now is 0. It used to be a ten+. 
Stockholders, board members are you listening. This has cost you $ and is ruining your reputation. 

Give us a definitive timeline that is in days not months or bring back the old app yesterday until you get it right. 
 

if you truly value the customer experience, then don’t make us be your test subjects. That is what focus groups and beta testers are for. 

 

 


Sorry, 12 weeks for this half baked letter of apology is ridiculous. It simply means nothing.

My entire Sonos system has been pretty much unusable after the 7th May update.  All the problems are well documented. 

I'm no tech man, but surely, reinstating the pre 7th May version of the app is what we ALL require, then our systems will work.

Sonos can then work on this current appalling version, and get it correct and FULLY  working, before subjecting us to it.

I find Patrick Spences letter quite condescending,  his apology is trite and really just words put together that don't give us, the Sonos customers, any hope, and still not a system that works properly...... since May 7th.

If I hadn't invested so much in my Sonos system. I would bin it off and buy something else. It will take an eternity for Sonos to get my trust back.


I am happy to find they are aware of the issues and are working to remedy them.  We all have gone through issues throughout the past few years and I feel Sonos is a great product.  I will be waiting for the updates to correct the issues.


but surely, reinstating the pre 7th May version of the app is what we ALL require, then our systems will work.

 

Nope. Fine here thanks. 


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Moderator edit: Sonos staff are clearly labelled as such


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Or someone with excellent attention to fine tuning his router, mesh, phone and app? It’s not sorcery that the app works for me.


I think the Sonos CEO should be fired by the board for gross incompetence. As I’ve posted elsewhere, the most recent updates in mid July caused my Local Library to stop working - again - rendering my investment of over $8000 in equipment and installation services for our whole-house music system only about half as useful as it was before. We own decades of purchased music, significant parts of which are not available via streaming, although at present we are working around the issue with a Spotify playlist that I transferred in there using Soundiiz.

Just a quick back of the envelope calculation on the amount of value Sonos has destroyed with the latest updates:

  • Let’s conservatively estimate that each Sonos customer averages an investment of $3000. From the other posts I’ve seen, that’s low, so quite defensible.
  • Now consider the recent estimates that Sonos has about 15 million customers.
  • That represents a total customer capital investment of $45 Billion USD - with a B.
  • Not everyone uses Local Library, but let’s estimate that 25% of customers do, and that each customer now gets half the utility from their investment that they did before, reducing its value by half.
  • Thus over $5 Billion USD in customer investment has been destroyed - but can be restored simply by fixing the bugs that preclude Local Library from working (even using the network share workaround from April for the new app).

Of course the board will care more about customer retention and its impact on subscriber revenue. How many of the 15 million customers will abandon Sonos and stop subscribing? Hard to say, but the longer this issue persists, the larger that number will be. And the cost to get those customers back will greatly exceed whatever it might cost to just FIX THE DANG ISSUE.

Why is this not the single most important task for the software engineering group? Why are they not working shifts, day and night and weekends too, until it is fixed? I’ve worked leading software engineering and/or product management groups for products in the B2B space, and I just can’t conceive of how this situation continues to exist.

Mike Gilpin

Managing VP

Gartner

You can use any android device and install the old version, linked many places on this forum and Reddit, to control your system as you always did.  I purchased an old android tablet from Amazon and installed the old version, but also turned off updates.  I had to do this so that myself and my children could continue to use the system as an alarm-clock.  The notion that they rolled this out without even a tiny consideration of including feature parity is laughable.

Overall, what Sonos has done here is inexcusable, and has broken every rule for technology rollouts, rollbacks, failsafe, safeguards, go/no-go planning for something as big as they claim this is.  

From a third-party perspective, this barely scratches the surface of the depth of their mishandling of what used to be their own healthy product and customer base.  If I was a shareholder, I would be absolutely livid about this because it’s almost as if Sonos is actively poisoning their own reputation for the sake of a few management egos, especially considering the fact that the previous (working) version can still be found, and can still control the systems.

Sonos management, especially upper-level management, must know that every complaint, review, appeal for a rollback, and article/blog written about this fiasco stays on the internet forever.  Samsung, for instance, could come out with a perfectly designed ice-cube maker that lasts forever, and I STILL won’t (probably) ever consider a Samsung refrigerator.  The ice-maker curse is something that’s going to haunt them for years, if not decades.  I have friends and co-workers that still joke about how “at least it’s not a Samsung ice-maker”.

 

I have dozens of Sonos products.  I look to have music in my life at every opportunity, and yet now every single time I open their latest app, I’m reminded of what a mess their product has become, and I know I’m not alone.  Their own application is a billboard for why people should look for a replacement, when instead it should be a reminder of why music is such an integral part of our lives.  The UX is not intuitive, and often the only thing that works when the app starts is their advertisements.

 

“Hey Samsung, my ice-maker quit working and started leaking all over the place, can you help?”
No, sorry, but we can insert a flyer with our latest deals into the ice tray if you’d like.


How on earth did your company end up in this mess? 


How on earth did your company end up in this mess? 

Their egos were, and still are, larger than their technological prowess and care for the brand.


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Or someone with excellent attention to fine tuning his router, mesh, phone and app? It’s not sorcery that the app works for me.

Hi. We need instructions on how to do everything right. For everyone. Maybe we have outdated routers? mine is about 5 years old.


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Or someone with excellent attention to fine tuning his router, mesh, phone and app? It’s not sorcery that the app works for me.

Isn’t that the point (often helpful yet often bragging Sonos fans on here)?? 

The vast majority of Sonos customers/users are NOT sophisticated tech users!  It should JUST WORK right out of the box, PERIOD!

Not to mention the many very techie folks who have posted on here that the app broke they Sonos systems. 

We are so very thrilled that you and handful of other frequent posters have a solid system with this crap-app, but please have just a little empathy for those who aren’t because of lousy leadership at Sonos.  You’re just rubbing salt in our wounds. 


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Or someone with excellent attention to fine tuning his router, mesh, phone and app? It’s not sorcery that the app works for me.

Hi. We need instructions on how to do everything right. For everyone. Maybe we have outdated routers? mine is about 5 years old.

I'll add to my problem. I couldn't connect the Era300s for a volumetric environment for a week. Work... then in the evening a couple of hours of torment. And it was only by chance that I decided to connect the Beam2 to the network by wire, and the ERA300s connected. I was happy. And I didn't know at all that Sonos had such a great problem with the app. I found out about the brand by accident while looking for a soundbar. And in countries far from America, he is not known at all. Only Samsung (it was necessary to take Samsung 990 or Klipsh). LG. JBL and China. but!!!! I wanted quality, an eco-system and feedback from a small number of customers in our country. My wife and I love the best, even on credit! And most importantly! It took me a long time to figure out how the ERA300 should work as a surround, there are no instructions on which drivers work in which audio format and which do not. And I still don't know, it's a mystery. It's just like at Apple, buy what WE give and keep quiet. Take it like WE did or go.... in Samsung


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Or someone with excellent attention to fine tuning his router, mesh, phone and app? It’s not sorcery that the app works for me.

Don't worry, your day will come. I'm betting my “excellent attention” rivals yours, yet my Sonos system’s behaviour differs day by day without any changes in my otherwise well-functioning network. Much is down to Sonos’s new “call home” cloud implementation. About 10% of the time my favourites won't load...until I refresh the app five seconds later. Sometimes firmware updates work, sometimes not. Last night the Calm Radio service stopped playing on Sonos for a few hours, but worked perfectly well in my network with the Calm app, with the third-party software of my (excellent) Wiim gear and when played via Roon. And the list goes on. When something works one second but not the next, then works again a few seconds later, it's not my network. When things that functioned perfectly for months stopped working or became problematic after the “courageous” update, it's not my network. When I have zero network problems with anything other than Sonos, it's not my network. When I have identical Sonos issues in Sonos setups in homes in two countries with completely different network gear (and both with gigabit internet service), it's not my network(s).

But, yes, it's not sorcery.

 


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Or someone with excellent attention to fine tuning his router, mesh, phone and app? It’s not sorcery that the app works for me.

Don't worry, your day will come. I'm betting my “excellent attention” rivals yours, yet my Sonos system’s behaviour differs day by day without any changes in my otherwise well-functioning network. Much is down to Sonos’s new “call home” cloud implementation. About 10% of the time my favouritesbwon't load...until I refresh the app five seconds later. Sometimes firmware updates work, sometimes not. Last night the Calm Radio service stopped playing on Sonis for a few hours, but worked perfectly well in my network with the Calm app, with the third-party software of my (excellent) Wiim gear and when played via Roon. And the list goes on. When something works one second but not the next, then works again a few seconds later, it's not my network. When things that functioned perfectly for months stopped working or became problematic after the “courageous” update, it's not my network. When I have zero network problems with anything other than Sonos, it's not my network. When I have identical Sonos issues in Sonos setups in homes in two countries with completely different network gear (and both with gigabit internet service), it's not my network(s).

But, yes, it's not sorcery.

 

where are these self-contemplative mega programmers, the buzzword IT specialists? Did you fly to the Moon without Wi-Fi, or is it not about America?


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Or someone with excellent attention to fine tuning his router, mesh, phone and app? It’s not sorcery that the app works for me.

Don't worry, your day will come. I'm betting my “excellent attention” rivals yours, yet my Sonos system’s behaviour differs day by day without any changes in my otherwise well-functioning network. Much is down to Sonos’s new “call home” cloud implementation. About 10% of the time my favouritesbwon't load...until I refresh the app five seconds later. Sometimes firmware updates work, sometimes not. Last night the Calm Radio service stopped playing on Sonis for a few hours, but worked perfectly well in my network with the Calm app, with the third-party software of my (excellent) Wiim gear and when played via Roon. And the list goes on. When something works one second but not the next, then works again a few seconds later, it's not my network. When things that functioned perfectly for months stopped working or became problematic after the “courageous” update, it's not my network. When I have zero network problems with anything other than Sonos, it's not my network. When I have identical Sonos issues in Sonos setups in homes in two countries with completely different network gear (and both with gigabit internet service), it's not my network(s).

But, yes, it's not sorcery.

 

where are these self-contemplative mega programmers, the buzzword IT specialists? Did you fly to the Moon without Wi-Fi, or is it not about America?

and, here's another problem with these volume controls and equalizers, in order for them to work, you need to click on the numbers to indicate them.


You must be one of the few, or a Sonos employee!

Or someone with excellent attention to fine tuning his router, mesh, phone and app? It’s not sorcery that the app works for me.

Don't worry, your day will come. I'm betting my “excellent attention” rivals yours, yet my Sonos system’s behaviour differs day by day without any changes in my otherwise well-functioning network. Much is down to Sonos’s new “call home” cloud implementation. About 10% of the time my favouritesbwon't load...until I refresh the app five seconds later. Sometimes firmware updates work, sometimes not. Last night the Calm Radio service stopped playing on Sonis for a few hours, but worked perfectly well in my network with the Calm app, with the third-party software of my (excellent) Wiim gear and when played via Roon. And the list goes on. When something works one second but not the next, then works again a few seconds later, it's not my network. When things that functioned perfectly for months stopped working or became problematic after the “courageous” update, it's not my network. When I have zero network problems with anything other than Sonos, it's not my network. When I have identical Sonos issues in Sonos setups in homes in two countries with completely different network gear (and both with gigabit internet service), it's not my network(s).

But, yes, it's not sorcery.

 

where are these self-contemplative mega programmers, the buzzword IT specialists? Did you fly to the Moon without Wi-Fi, or is it not about America?

and, here's another problem with these volume controls and equalizers, in order for them to work, you need to click on the numbers to indicate them.

but I'm probably the only one, SONOS will say. The rest of the staff is doing well! Brave New World! Put on the mask, they will say again soon. But this is a little later, while the rehearsal is in progress. They have billions and they get high. They don't care about our playlists. IN GENERAL! If they wanted to, they fixed everything in a couple of days. They get high from our problems and tantrums! Satanists probably. There are no more versions...


Sonos customers, both those with and without problems, must understand that there are at least four issues at play here:

  1.  The technical problems that Sonos will hopefully eventually fix.
  2. The missing functionality that Sonos claims they will eventually attempt to reintroduce.
  3. The glaring security issues introduced with play.sonos.com.
  4. The insanely designed UI of the new app, which can be written off as opinion; however, the UX is bad even if people force themselves to use it and claim they like it.  It’s worse than Zune.

Everyone (even Sonos) continues to conflate these items, which is why we’re talking past each other, and why people get so heated in the discussions.