Retired Sonos Staff

End of Software Support - Clarifications

December 8, 2022 at 11:29 AM
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We announced yesterday that some of our oldest Sonos products will be moving into a legacy mode in May of 2020. Our commitment is to support products with regular software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, and we have a track record of supporting products far longer.

Here is some public information we’ve shared, gathered into one place to respond to some of your questions in one easy thread, so that people can find the correct information easily.

Beginning in May, software updates and new features from Sonos will only be delivered to systems with only modern products.

After May, systems that include legacy products will continue to work as before - but they will no longer receive software updates or new features.

Sonos will work to maintain the existing experience and conduct bug fixes, but our efforts will ultimately be limited by the lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products.

We don’t expect any immediate impact to your experience, but access to services and overall functionality will eventually be disrupted, particularly as partners evolve their own services and features.

Customers with both legacy and modern products have time to decide what option is best for them. You can continue to use your whole system in legacy mode - in this case, it will stop receiving updates and new features.

You will also be able to separate your legacy products from your modern products, so that the modern products can still receive updates and new features, and legacy products can still be used separately. We’ll have more information on how to do this in May when you can take that action.

Another option available to all customers with legacy products is to take advantage of the Trade Up program, which allows you to upgrade older Sonos products to modern ones with a 30% discount. Trade Up will be open to customers at any time should they decide to upgrade.

We recognize this is new for Sonos owners, just as it is for Sonos. We are committed to help you by making options available to you to support the best decision for your home.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate with asking.

Update 2/22: A message from our CEO

We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn’t exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Patrick Spence
CEO, Sonos

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Niaccurshi

Lyricist III

Quote from Sonos Annual Report: Our product roadmap is largely focused on delivering products with voice control.

Might be a nice to have, but not what I bought into Sonos for and not something I’m particularly bothered about. And still not a reason legacy products should stop working - no-one expects them to miraculously become voice-controllable.

Strange, I’ve not seen any announcement that a legacy product will suddenly stop working. Just no more updates for them, post May 2020.

While some are clearly getting too caught up in what this announcement means and misinterpreting what’ll happen to individual speakers, if my system has to be split in to modern and legacy systems, separate and unable to be streamed across, from May then they are, by the definition of the USP I was buying the system for in the first place, suddenly not working.

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Geelsmark

Lyricist I

I am moving this spring to a new house, and need to add about 5-6 more speakers and a full stereo for the TV - guess where im not gonna buy those. Product of this price and quality should last more than 5 years! I have recommended to my parents that they should buy them, which they did, and now in a few years i gotta teach them an entire new way of playing their music, on top of 100 dollars of new investments.
I am done with this company, disregarding your customers in this way is unacceptable, and not something i will continue to support.
So farewell Sonos - I have bought my final product from you.

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User576548

Lyricist I

Well its all been said on this thread. What an appalling decision, which amounts to blackmail. I suspect few people will take the upgrade offer, as all trust in this company has now been shattered.. If anyone has e mail addresses for CEO or shareholders etc it may be useful to circulate these so that the pissed off community can make their feelings known directly rather than through the forum where they can be conveniently ignored.

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Pat Oakley

Lyricist I

I too am disgusted by Sonos position on this. I have built system up on the basis that software updates would be ongoing. I can no longer trust this company and will not purchase further products. I don’t buy the ‘memory limitation’ line preventing updates. Awful marketing from a company that used to be good.

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Abenters

Lyricist I

The News has now hit the UK Press, it’s in The Times, Headline Sonos Speake’s are obsolete within months! I think a quick rethink needs to be made on the announcement, but even with this they have lost trust in what was a loyal following. For any management reading these comments let’s see you put this right and admit what a balls up you made.

Ouch!

Plus the BBC, Daily Mail, Metro, Evening Standard, The Sun, What HiFi and AOL UK. The share price has fallen over 2%. At some point will someone at Sonos have a rethink?

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lalo48

Lyricist I

Like others, I was a loyal Sonos customer. These are very expensive products for my budget, but I thought they were worth saving for and splurging on. I recommended Sonos to everyone. I was looking at purchasing another speaker this summer. Not now. I will never purchase another Sonos product after this. It’s shameful what they are doing. I cannot afford to upgrade every 5 years; 30% off a new unit is a joke. Once I can no longer stream Spotify from my legacy speakers, I will be looking at different brands. If anyone is interested, here is an article on Sonos alternatives. https://www.androidcentral.com/best-sonos-alternatives I’ve heard good things about Google Home Max in particular.

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Svenska Marti

Lyricist II

A question to Sonos Management, how are you going to redeem the brand destruction you have just invoked?
use this as an example of my present perception of Sonos, I’ve invested heavily in Sonos kit, I have purchased 9 connect amps and have music everywhere in my house, I’ve been a huge fan and have recommended you to friends and family, I even purchased and set up an amp as a start up for my father in law so he could do the same as we do as he loved the experience we have, with your announcement that you are not supporting legacy kit (including the £5k of kit I own) past May 2020 you have killed all goodwill. You give me the option of spending £3800 as a discounted upgrade to get me back to full support after May, that would make my outlay to Sonos £8,800, but there’s one issue with that, my trust in your company has evaporated..I’d not spend a farthing with you after this disaster! You’ve killed the brand.

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Bill_29

Lyricist III

Apart from anything else this new thread still doesn’t address the issue of what is being done where people own components where there AREN’T any options which we can “Tradeup” to!

I rely on the “Bridge” to fill the gaps in their woeful built-in wifi, and the “Connect” to be able to integrate Sonos with my livingroom Surround Sound setup.

The Boost is the new version of the Bridge, and the Port is the new version of the Connect (but isn’t as good).

Sorry I wasn’t very clear, what I meant was that the Bridge isn’t offering a trade-up option, and the neither was the Port, but that might be because it has yet to be implemented? Either way, it is going to cost us a small fortune just to maintain the same functionality, and I really don’t think I want to take the risk spending any more money on Sonos. I have only had the Connect for a few years which cost me £300 so the thought of shelling out the same again every few years seems ridiculous.

I always had the impression that Sonos was a bit more future-proof than other scenarios, but I am now realising it is far from it. The fundamental problem is that the tech is built into the speaker itself, and the quality of the speaker & amp is arguably where the real cost lies, so when the cheap crappy PCB becomes obsolete, so too does the entire speaker unit! Good quality amps and speakers can last decades, so it makes sense that the design should have an updatable component to enable it to carry on, especially in this day and age. Sadly I have realised this far too late and I only hope that when I sell up, that I can at least get some money back. Thank God that I didn’t make the mistake of adding Sonos to my AV setup!

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Svenska Marti

Lyricist II

A question to Sonos Management, how are you going to redeem the brand destruction you have just invoked?
use this as an example of my present perception of Sonos, I’ve invested heavily in Sonos kit, I have purchased 9 connect amps and have music everywhere in my house, I’ve been a huge fan and have recommended you to friends and family, I even purchased and set up an amp as a start up for my father in law so he could do the same as we do as he loved the experience we have, with your announcement that you are not supporting legacy kit (including the £5k of kit I own) past May 2020 you have killed all goodwill. You give me the option of spending £3800 as a discounted upgrade to get me back to full support after May, that would make my outlay to Sonos £8,800, but there’s one issue with that, my trust in your company has evaporated..I’d not spend a farthing with you after this disaster! You’ve killed the brand.

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PerfectSound

Lyricist III

I’m considering setting up a crowd funded legal challenge to get advice on legality and taking it further. It seems to me equipment in full working order should continue to be software supported. Additionally, if perfectly good new(ish) equipment won’t be supported if plugged into legacy equipment the facts should be clearly stated in the buying information so that customers know clearly what the full facts are. Nothing that I can see says this.

VW had terrible publicity over their problems, a major crowd funded legal action is ongoing and still continues to damage their reputation. Nothing good can come from this Sonos.

This is a great idea!

It’s also heartbreaking thing that as we have seen from SEC files Sonos has known this. The real reason is not in technical side as they have told for us.

The owners did get this kind of message about the situation long time ago:

“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.

And from SEC file you can also see that they have been thinking already about bad PR. So actually they did know what’s going to happen, but because of $$$$$$$ they decided to go forward anyway. Of course I believe they did not know how huge problem this will be.. Clearly some people have been thinking that maybe some customers will get angry, but now actually 99% of Sonos customers are furious..

Now the decision maker can count how many $$$$$$$ they have lost already and how much they will loose in the future. This is a catastrophic situation for the company.

I can make a book about this. For the dummies: How to kill a brand with a single email

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