Retired Sonos Staff

End of Software Support - Clarifications

Dec 8, 2022 11:29 AM UTC
4256 replies
270208 views
Translate All

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

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

Show previous replies

6

60ish

Contributor I

I sent a invitation to CEO to comment on how he felt about screwing over loyal sonos customers, guess what.......not even an automated brush off reply.....guess that says it all.

I think CEO works for another company that is looking for SONOS to fail.

Translate

D

Dave Monk

Lyricist I

Disappointed.

Translate

L

lawhhh

Lyricist III

The flood has started… too late to sell your soon to be trashed Sonos stuff. Screen shot from Gumtree. I was actually there looking to buy some old amps to hook up an alternative streming device into and satrted seeing Sonos components, so I did a quick search for Sonos UK and there are tons of them, I bet few if any people mention their very limited lifespan.

Translate

D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

So over the years i have bought 9 devices.

1 Play 5 (Gen 1)

3 Play 3

4 Play 1

1 Playbar

Now you want to piss all over me by discontinuing the Play 5, right when i was about to buy a SUB to complement the Playbar and 2 of the Play 1’s (Rear channel for sorround), and a new “1” for a hobby room.

Well guess what...Those $1000+ you can keep waiting for, because they will NOT be spent now.

Also, in the future i will actively warn people not to buy Sonos, as it is far to risky. The Play 3’s that i have in each kids room, was only released 2 years after the Play 5 so i expect them to be discontinued in 2 years, followed by the playbar in 3 and the ones in 4 years.

So instead of investing in more sonos equipment i will now focus on migrating away from the sonos ecosystem instead of embarking on an endless voyage, filled with units needing replacement before they are worn out.

I bet you factored all the angry existing costumers into your calculations, but i dont really think you know how many people that has Sonos, has it because they saw it at friends houses and so on.

So instead of getting new costumers from word of mouth, you will have the same mouths, not advertise your products but rather warn people to stay away.

This is certainly going to cost you a lot of older costumers and also make quite a dent in the new costumer base, as lots of them come from word of mouth from existing costumers.

Translate

M

mmca22gr

Enthusiast II

Interesting that with all the furore ongoing there’s no hint of crisis management PR getting involved. Leaves the impression that this reaction has been factored in and doesn’t require any additional handling.

It seems clear from the SEC filing that they were expecting considerable flak about this announcement, and have factored it in to their business plan. So I think that it’s just a case of them being fully prepared to lose a few legacy customers - who are no longer buying much anyway….

it may have been factored in but I’m fairly sure not at this level, and now the media outlets are starting to show interest this is rather embarrassing for sonos

So far, maybe a couple of thousand disgruntled people - but how many customers do they actually have?

They have 9m devices (not customers)

37% of sales come from existing customers. My guess is that those customers enthuse about the product and drive more sales.

I am surprised the share price has not tanked.

Translate

M

macallan18

Enthusiast I

My main concern, and I apologize if it’s already been asked - how much longer until the sub and playbar are also killed off? I believe they’ve been out since 2012, so can we expect them to disappear in 2022?

@macallan18, our commitment is to support products with software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, and we have a track record of supporting for longer. You can still purchase from us the same Sub and Playbar that were introduced a while back. And even if they do move to legacy at some point in the distance, they’ll continue working as they currently do, but without software updates. Even if software requirements move beyond their hardware capabilites, they’ll keep on playing your TV input until the hardware breaks.

I appreciate that as I don’t think I’d seen it written anywhere before. I will say this in defense of this action by Sonos, and I may be the only one who isn’t an employee to offer a defense: Your customers are probably a lot like me. Loved the product, recommended it, and over time filled the house with it. If I could trade all my legacy products for the latest and greatest I’m sure we all would, but frankly the old ones sound great and work fine. The problem for Sonos and the shareholders is I have no reason or desire to buy anything else, and their job is to squeeze as much money out of each quarter as possible. And prior to this announcement, most of us were probably in the same boat.

Sonos did a horrible job communicating this, implementing this, and reading how their customers would react. The 30% trade in was foolish to begin with, as 40-50% is (was) pretty easy to get on ebay or craigslist. I’d recommend tacking on a 45% off coupon in addition to the 30% trade in if you actually want to get these items out of the environments and keep your customers happy. Even better, figure out a way to keep the legacy items properly working with the new ones. I don’t expect HD audio on a “connect: 5”. I don’t care about any voice support. Play, pause, volume, skip track, back track, queue management and very basic spotify/other integration (add song to playlist, etc) should be trivial no matter what Spotify does with their API. At the very least, make it so this functionality is available so long as you have ONE modern sonos speaker in your setup!

Go read twitter, reddit, this forum, avs, anywhere people talk about sonos. You went from having customer loyalty that was the envy of everyone this side of Apple to being hated by the same people who put you where you are. It isn’t too late to admit a mistake and back track. My suggestions are good ones, I’m sure others in this too long to read thread have some great ones, and I suggest you take them and put a muzzle on whoever thought of this idea.

Translate

A

AP2050

Lyricist III

I am also worried how long it will be before my 'non legacy' equipment becomes obsolete? I spent a lot more money than I could afford on a system that would last a lifetime and be almost impossible to blow up etc etc etc if I had even the slightest suspicion that Sonos customers would be treated this way I would definitely have spent my very hard earned cash on a different company, how this must look to new customers when there are so many existing and up and coming home audio systems on the market now?

The lack of concern for the environment is very telling.

Good point, as a matter of fact. I had talked to a few co-workers this morning who Sonos I assume is trying to target as a new customer.

This coworker bought the beam and was going to buy another sonos speaker for his bedroom but after he heard the news, he was like uhhh I am fine with a google mini instead if the premium I’m paying is not going to pay off if they are going “force obsolescence” in the future. Excellent work Sonos
The other coworker has never bought Sonos but was going to buy one as he was really impressed by the sound quality is now not going to because of the trade up program. He wasn’t happy they would brick perfectly working speakers that will end up in land fills. Environmentally responsible is a big deal for this younger generation. Again, good job Sonos.

Congratulations SONOS, you’ve been able to alienate potential new customers, casual customers and heavily invested customers like us in a matter of months.

Translate

D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

They have 9m devices (not customers)

37% of sales come from existing customers. My guess is that those customers enthuse about the product and drive more sales.

I am surprised the share price has not tanked.

Yeah and god only knows how many of the 63% of new costumer sales is from word of mouth from the 37%

I bet that if they dont reverse this decision, in 10 years they will be in the same business school books as Nokia and others on “how NOT to do”.

Translate

R

Rturland

Lyricist I

Not only is this disregard for customers it is blatant green-washing - Does Sonos really think that sending thousands of perfectly fine devices for recycling is eco-friendly? It is, I suggest, entirely the opposite. What a waste, and what a shame. Surely there is another solution.

Translate

A

anjrober

Enthusiast II

So as we have all agreed, Sonos isn’t just a speaker but really a computer with speakers or amplifiers attached. Perhaps one way to be free from the control of Sonos is to jailbreak the devices and put a flavor of linux on it. This community is full of developers. There is already an OSS UI for sonos out there. I seem to remember an OSS version of Alexa integration as well. The PC industry had OS control over hardware until linux freed us from MS control of the hardware.

Translate

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community