I just read this about your recent SEC filing:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/11/17559380/sonos-airplay-2-support-software-update-download
“We expect that in the near to intermediate term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products,” says Sonos in a recent SEC filing.
When will you let customers know about which products will be affected by this discontinuation plan? Clearly you know internally since you say in the near to immediate term this policy is going ahead. I presume for example the first gen Play 5 you no longer sell will be affected and the old Sonos Bridge.
The problem for those of us using speakers with online services such as Spotify probably means once API changes are made by the service provider, we'll almost certainly be shut out from using those services with our older Sonos speakers.
There's nothing particularly shocking about this. I'm curious what the plan is though and when we'll be told.
Discontinuing service and software updates for older legacy Sonos speakers?
A
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I was about to invest in installing SONOS ceiling speakers throughout my house - only to receive the legacy product email telling me 4 of my current products will not be supported from May, and if I keep them connected to the rest of my SONOS system, then that will be comprised too! What a bunch of crooks! Pay a premium price and all you get is a 10 year lifespan! You are @&£\*#! Kidding me! I’ll end up spending over £1000 to replace these “legacy” products - even with that token discount. I’ll be sure to tell everyone I know never to buy SONOS and I won’t be doing so again. Lucky I didn’t buy the soundbar and sub either as I would have to write that off in a few years time too! Well done SONOS - you have turned a brand ambassador into a brand detractor. I’ll never buy SONOS again.
No problem with new services not being available, like control from apps like Spotify, voice control like Alexa, or the newly released airplay. But being able to continue streaming and using local media the way I do now, i hope will be kept. I have 20 speakers and it starts to feel like Sonos could care less about people using there system, just the new market.
I downloaded v9 this morning, and chuckled while reading the new features, none of which I will be using. Hmmmm, no new windows program, hmmm nothing cool for my android devices and gui, no new app features like maybe a new virtual grouping option, no cool new home theatre options, no neat amp additions, no cool local media software. So I sit hear watching new hardware and software come out the last few years, but nothing that would make me buy more, and believe me, I'm looking for reasons.
I think you bring up some excellent points. Clearly Sonos is trying to appeal to a wide audience and it becomes rather difficult to appeal to everyone. Like you, I have no real interest in airplay 2, but I am interested in the Beam and voice control. I don't care about local media, but agree on virtual grouping. There are plenty of customers on here that do care about airplay 2, and are only going to ever buy one or two units and don't care much about multiroom functionality. There are all sorts of us on here. Sonos is kind of in a catch-22 in then it's difficult to please all their customers with their variety of needs and wishes, both old and new customers.
Yes, it appears they are going for that market, which might be the correct one. But it seems like I would still be throwing in things for us multi-room users! If that market doesn't see multi-room as the biggest selling feature of Sonos and sees echo dots, etc as comparable options then they aren't going to be buying as many. If they buy 3, then you need 6-7 of them to sell the same amount as one of me.
I see where they are going and I think its good they have an eye on that market, but that market can easily switch to google or some other speakers once they have some decent multi-room and then Sonos is left squeezed out. Don't see it happening soon, I just don't see the focus on existing customers which I think could be done alongside the new markets.
Partnering in the home automation/ intercom market would be a valuable field, love to use my speakers as doorbells, intercoms, etc. I see these type of apps etc but they are done by side programmers. A little focus there would be great also. Like the guy who had several write ups about using Sonos and tips for using. They hired him, and now ive seen nothing coming from Sonos that looks like he developed it.
I do process control and the primary vendor I program with, for years watched another guy then company write tools for their software. They could have easily got together a team and created the same software in 3 months and just a handful of people. But never saw the market. All their customers ended up buying it for 50000K plus annual support contract revenue. They eventually had to buy them spending many millions when they could have created for less than 100K.
Just hope Sonos can still see that side of the business and keep it going or I think they will be overcome. Sonos is better than anybody in the multi-room market because of their initial excellence in the field and still are. But it seems like they are just taking it for granted.
Considering the original Play:5 is the only Play speaker Sonos aren't selling anymore and the Play:3 is the second oldest Play speaker in the Sonos Lineup and Sonos are still selling it, if they were to pull support from it or any other Play speaker, I could imagine there would be an uproar from anyone who has purchased these products more recently and paid a premium expecting years of use.
Userlevel 3
+4
Speaking of, does Sonos still update the firmware on the original Play:5? If so, that's not bad for a speaker that came out 9 years ago. And I just found out they still update the Play:3 which is 7 years old. My old iPad Mini was only 4 years old when it couldn't take the newest update. Probably not the best comparison, but gives a general idea.
Just to bump this old thread. Very pissed off now that my Sonos Play 5 Gen 1, bought just seven years ago, is effectively obsolete. Sonos inform me that I now have the choice of junking it or not allowing my whole system to update.
I used to rave about Sonos to other people. I’d now suggest they approach with caution because I suspect this is a policy designed to extract ££. What do you reckon? Am I wrong?
Before anybody says “just seven years ago?’… yep. I don’t think that kind of lifetime is remotely acceptable these days.
Totally agree and with the comments by others about how environmentally unfriendly and utimately, unsustainable this model is.
Userlevel 2
My legacy products are less than 2 years old! - bought in 2018.
And they look identical to (and where sold as the same as) the exact same components sold a few months later but which are considered “modern”. Shame on
I have audio system components that are decades old and still working just fine.
Why would anyone invest many thousands of dollars in the SONOS proprietary systems when they are clearly being sold as a short-life disposable product?
As someone said, Play 5 1st gen was discontinued for new sales. Updates are of course being provided. I have one.
The point is simple. If updates that are required to play (therefore use it) stops to be provided that will be unacceptable in my point of view.
The sonos controller is an example. If I wanted to keep using it, I would be forced to do not update all other units. There was no option to keep the controller and using updated speakers.
By the way, I don't remember any sound system, player, laptop, cellphone that was forced to stop doing what it was designed to do.
I have an old Nokia cellphone that still make calls , I have an old laptop that still turns on, play music, access internet and do all the things that I had when I purchased it. (Both are not used anymore because I decided to move on to have new features and power capacity)
And finally, I have speakers that I earned from my parents that have more than 30 years that I still use it plugged now in my connect:amp
I am not saying that it will be the future of Sonos, but if so, having units that are not able to stream because they decided so, it will be a breakthrough for me.
Alexa is fancy, voice control is nice , but I bought it to play music all of them together . If updates are required to keep it like this for 30 , 50 years, I do expect to have it.
By the way, I have the first iPod for example and it still plays very well.
The point is simple. If updates that are required to play (therefore use it) stops to be provided that will be unacceptable in my point of view.
The sonos controller is an example. If I wanted to keep using it, I would be forced to do not update all other units. There was no option to keep the controller and using updated speakers.
By the way, I don't remember any sound system, player, laptop, cellphone that was forced to stop doing what it was designed to do.
I have an old Nokia cellphone that still make calls , I have an old laptop that still turns on, play music, access internet and do all the things that I had when I purchased it. (Both are not used anymore because I decided to move on to have new features and power capacity)
And finally, I have speakers that I earned from my parents that have more than 30 years that I still use it plugged now in my connect:amp
I am not saying that it will be the future of Sonos, but if so, having units that are not able to stream because they decided so, it will be a breakthrough for me.
Alexa is fancy, voice control is nice , but I bought it to play music all of them together . If updates are required to keep it like this for 30 , 50 years, I do expect to have it.
By the way, I have the first iPod for example and it still plays very well.
Sonos is not a speaker, so expecting it to be like a speaker is nonsense. Sonos is an integrated multi-room music streamer, with significant reliance on an external ecosystem which includes things like cloud services, streaming services, voice services, etc. To expect 13+ year old technology to operate within this ecosystem in perpetuity is not only unrealistic, it is foolish. To expect it to be like the old pair of Advents you bought back in 1972 is downright absurd.
Furthermore, to expect Sonos to continually support every software/firmware release which occurs prior to an older unit no longer being supported is also unrealistic. Sonos is a for profit company, and how much profit is to be made if they waste manpower on a configuration which will eventually lose most if not all functionality, for a forever dwindling user base, who by definition will never buy another Sonos device? Answer: Not much.
Please note the lack of profanity...and we’ll see if this one gets pulled.
Pardon me but Sonos calls their products “speakers”.
Despite the glossy ads promising streaming music around your house and the ability to use up to 32 speakers (in the ecosystem), this is not always the reality.
I have two Sonos systems, one in a heavily populated urban city (probably not unusual) where in a small modern house I am unable to play more than 3 of the 8 speakers without dropouts. I am told this is due to wireless interference and competition causing the source to be unable to maintain enough data throughput to feed all the speakers at once with flac as the filetype used. But even internet radio will drop out if I try to play it on all eight speakers. A solution suggested for this was to wire them; hardly the selling point of a wireless system.
The system I use in a much less populous rural location works pretty well but can still suffer from glitches which spoils the enjoyment of the system.
I would have no problem if Sonos and other companies selling similar products made it transparently clear on all their advertising and at point of sale, rather than in the small print which they know no one reads, that their customers were buying a licence to use their speakers AND which is, as you say, “..an integrated multi-room (sometimes) music streamer, with significant reliance on an external ecosystem which includes things like cloud services, streaming services, voice services, etc”. To which I would add, where the wireless signal is not compromised by house design and/or layout or local interference from competing wifi signals in the neighbourhood and, only for as long as Sonos deems the hardware is not obsolete and, that all the claims made for the ecosystem may be based on best case scenarios.
But of course this is not done because Sonos knows that their market (and the whole market for similar products) would be compromised and would not have grown as much as it has.
I have now decided that I cannot buy any more Sonos products. I will manage with those I have for as long as possible, wiring some if necessary and, as Sonos decides they are obsolete hardware, they will be added to a scrapheap somewhere.
At some point I will revert to the old way of doing things with one fixed CD Ripper/hard disk player system in each room. It will have wireless capabilities but will not be as reliant on support by means of software updates to the extent that Sonos clearly is.
Not happy. Surely I should be able to use my gen one investments and just not receive updates to just those. I have just bought bought a Move and that's probably gonna need updates so need away of having different versions on the same network , even if you could not group different versions would be okay
Everything listed in your profile can play together in an S1 system.
It is sold as a smart speaker, or more accurately a whole home audio system. It’s the smart, computer aspect of the devices that doesn’t stand the test of time the way a passive or active speaker would.
None of mine are smart in the sense of voice control. My sub is not ‘smart’, the Play 1’s are not ‘smart’, the play 3s are not ‘smart’. I am sure Sonos had the plans in train for integrated vocie control etc but was not mentioned at all when I first bought the bulk of my kit.
The point is that they clearly have aspects to them that are different than a passive or active speaker that has the long life you were alluding too. The speakers that you mentioned (none of them Legacy by the way) all have tech in them to stream directly from the internet, communicate with other devices, etc, all things that were present when you bought your kit. That is why they have a shorter life span then a passive or active speaker.
smart speaker - an Internet-enabled speaker that is controlled by spoken commands and capable of streaming audio content, relaying information, and communicating with other devices.
That’s Google definition, which I think is rather poor since it does not need to do all of these things, just some of them. Since Google smart speakers are all voice controlled, I guess they saw fit to make it a requirement. Doesn’t matter though, as your Sonos speakers can be controlled by voice, whether you use that feature or not.
None of mine are smart in the sense of voice control. My sub is not ‘smart’, the Play 1’s are not ‘smart’, the play 3s are not ‘smart’. I am sure Sonos had the plans in train for integrated vocie control etc but was not mentioned at all when I first bought the bulk of my kit.
Don’t think we had even heard of Alexa and certainly not in the context of Sonos.
Do your speakers group together? Can you move music from one to another? Can you control them via a computer or mobile device? Do they receive updates from the internet? Are they built on top of a computer operating system, specifically Linux? Do they include a music services API that lets music services connect with and play over the speakers? Do they also have an control API to allow 3rd party devices and software to control the speakers?
If you answered ‘Yes’ to any of the above (Hint: The answer is ‘Yes’ to all of them), then they are smart speakers, not just speakers.
I could answer your questions, but I choose not to because you’ve spent most of this thread insulting me.
And Sonos employees are marked as such.
Just so you know I don’t take that as an insult from you. It’s your choice. No insults from me. Just an opinion that doesn’t accord with yours. And if anyone threw any insults it was you I’m afraid by posting a reply which could easily be interpreted by anyone else reading as implying that I had used a profanity in my post that I said had been taken down for some odd reason. And if you can’t see that then you won’t understand why you come across as a bully either (as someone else here pointed out). I can accept you probably don’t intend this but why not reflect on it? It’s not just me who found your responses somewhat ‘off colour’.
The announcement makes no assertions about PLAY:1s.
I understand that. But if they can stop supporting my Connect, and make me choose between updating my app and firmware or keeping my Connect, then they can do that to my Play:1s, as well.
I can live with losing one Connect. But losing four great speakers that are performing perfectly would be too much. I think Sonos should be careful about forcing these decisions on its customers, because customer loyalty has been one of its strengths and this policy could quickly destroy that.
The pressure builds - story in the Guardian now:
Just heard all about this on the BBC R4’s Consumer Programme - You and Yours.
Shocking that they will actually ‘Brick’ working products. We need to be putting less into landfill not more!
Hello Sonos, WAKE UP!
The day you turn my six Sonos Ones, two Sonos Play 1’s and a Sonos Beam off, will be the day I switch to a new offering by another company! Simple as that. Customer brand loyalty lost!
30% discount on new products to try to attract customers to stay Sonos, is shockingly bad!
Just heard an update on You and Yours and one guys phoned in to say the only ‘upgrade’ Sonos were offering from his current soon to be obsolete speaker was that the new ones could play 3 times louder!
These are not mobile phones that get handled, dropped, connected to chargers everyday, and actually wear out! Where you could justify
needing new hardware.
These are mid end speakers that sit on a shelf and get dusted once in while!
Oh, and of course users accept they will not do all the things new models will do - How silly to suggest such a thing Sonos!
I won’t be recommending Sonos to anyone anymore!
Yes, I know my devices, the ones I quoted, will not be in question yet, but is it just a matter of time?
“I said the day they turn them off...”
I don’t know where the misinformation is coming from, but “they” are not turning anything off at all. Legacy devices will continue to work just as they do today after May and for the foreseeable future. There could be things like protocol/security changes at music services that may cause those services to deteriorate. However those types of changes are very rare, and quite possibly a fix could be fit into the legacy memory and storage, then issued as a bug/security update.
The only time a device is “turned off” is when you voluntarily choose to recycle it for the 30% discount. This is your choice, Sonos is not bricking anything against your will. As to them going into landfills, you are asked to recycle them yourself, or you can send it to Sonos free of charge and they will do the recycling.
If the program is misinformed, Sonos clearly have a lot of work to do to put this straight…
I think that the messages about the ‘legacy’ approach and the bricking of units when ‘trading up’ got confused, probably because one option suggested in the email/posts to avoid a ‘legacy’ system was to ‘trade up’.
I’m certainly not trying to defend Sonos, but this type of misinformation just upsets people for no reason.
Sonos handled this extremely poorly. Most manufactures will continue to provide software updates for at least 5 years after they discontinue a product. I am a Sonos dealer and I received from Sonos my last Connect Amp shipment in January 2019. My last Connect was shipped to me in March 2019. I have customers with systems less than 1 year old that is now obsolete. They should have seen this coming and come out with a Connect Amp and Connect 2.0 years ago to avoid this issue.
Will you continue to be a Sonos dealer? If I was a customer of yours, I’d be frustrated at you as well as with Sonos. I was initially turned onto Sonos by my AV expert, and I’m guessing he’s now fielding many questions from frustrated clients.
Your commitment is to support “modern” devices for at least 5 years after you got them??? Is that a joke? Do you think 5 years is sufficient when you’re spending this kind of money on a supposedly high-end product? This just keeps getting worse and worse with Sonos.
See this article in case you haven’t already. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/23/sonos-to-deny-software-updates-to-owners-of-older-equipment
I imagine the bad press for Sonos will continue on, and all product reviews will need to contain a Huge disclaimer/asterisk, “Your high-end product will be good for at least 5 years, but then your Sonos equipment might not be supported, might not work with your favorite streaming service, and it might have security vulnerabilities.” Thanks, but no thanks Sonos.
I’ve been with Sonos for 20 years now. I’ve purchased just about every product you’ve ever made from the beginning. Over $10,000 worth of your equipment and I’ve sold even more for you with recommendations. I’ve already thrown away the Controller 100, two Controller 200’s and 3 Bridges. Now you want me to “Upgrade” and give you more money. I’m finished. Bluesound here I come. It’s better anyway. It has High Resolution.
Could not agree more. Shameful.
I did write to the CEO and did get a response from a regional supervisor, so potentially they are considering a shocking mis-judgement.
Perhaps there was a thought that their customer base were premium spenders to match their premium products. In reality we are probably a diverse mix of society with diverse budgets and music preferences and therefore this is where the fatal mistake lies.
Hopefully a solution will follow, or a competitor will gra the market.....
What this will have me do is consider non-Sonos products that are Sonos compatible to replace my two Play:5 speakers. I’m looking at Ikea’s Symfonisk bookshelf speakers.
I was an early adopter of several Sonos products and have purchased quite of few of them between 2013 and 2017. So this unexpected notice of the end-of-life of three of my products (one Bridge I still use, and both Play:5 speakers) is sad and will likely be costly.
Sonos also needs to do a better job of letting Bridge owners know there is an update to the Bridge, the Boost, and provide a “trade-up” discount for current owners of EOL Bridges to the Boost.
I understand that tech advances. But I’m not happy about this and am thinking through options.
Userlevel 2
Why are Sonos selling refurbished generation one product and stating on the FAQ page for the product that the product will continue to support all current features and more in the future but email me stating that my generation one products will not receive new features and over time likely to suffer a disruption in functionality ??
Ive never felt incensed enough to post comments on any forum but the news that Sonos are literally making me dump my 2 gen 1 sonos 5s is to me a company that cares little about there customers and suicide for them as a company why would anyone invest in there products if every few years they stop updating them and just expect the customer to accept it or re invest in Sonos with some half baked 30% duscount scheme good money after bad i say. Over the years we have seen many large companies make serious mistakes financially and reputationaly by underestimating there customers i sincerly hope this IS the case for sonos
Quite... There's been nothing that I'd find useful since Trueplay, and I can't use that much as I don't have an iDevice (well, not one that works, since they stopped supporting it).
Yes... They took away the track count, and still haven't done such simple things as display the composer tag - things that would actually be useful to me, whilst implementing stuff that I, personally, couldn't give a toss about.....
No, I'm not spending any more money on Sonos - it simply isn't good enough for my needs.
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