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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Any lawyers out there who can supply a opinion on the legality of this move by Sonos? Surely the law must have something to say about companies who sell expensive equipment and then suddenly announce five years down the line that it’s all redundant…….?
All I can say is BUMMED!
2 - Play 5 Gen 2
2 - Symfonisk
2 - Sonos One
3 - Play 5 Gen 1
1 - Playbar
1 - Connect
1 - Sub
1 - Play 3
2 - Play 1
Dear Ryan and Sonos
Having posted to page 54 of the previous thread, I shall not repeat my disgust at your actions.
I shall merely reiterate the point that, like many other loyal and enthusiastic customers, I can no longer trust you to deliver a high quality product that will last long enough to justify the high prices your charge.
Shame on you.
Peter
I’ve been Sonos customer for years and like many on here I have spent over $5,000 pulling my system together piece by piece. The slap in the face by Sonos shows that they are more concerned with forcing existing customers to purchase new temporary products knowing that they will be obsolete in 5 years or less.
I will be reaching out to Best Buy to see what their return policy is and what promotions they will be offering for Sonos competitor products. I’ve had my Bose products for over 20 years in my media room and they offer lifetime product support and replacement.
Depending on what I hear I will have the following equipment for sale at 50% of what I paid for them.
Beam
1
Bridge
1
Connect AMP
1
Move
1
Play 1
6
Play 3
1
Play 5
4
Playbar
1
Sub
2
Happy to take the sub and the move off your hands at 50%! Best Buy’s return policy is 15 days or 45 if you are elite plus.
Are people really going to toss whole systems and outlay all that cash for a new, even more expensive one, made by a company that could disappear or discontinue their line (e.g. Bose) at any time? Of all of the companies that make these systems, Sonos seems to be the most stable to invest your money into for products, despite this announcement.
Sorry but when you spend a lot of your hard earned money on a system, just to have a large part of that investment junked with little notice is shocking. I for one will slowly move to another solution as I have lost all trust in Sonos. I won’t just throw it all out but will plan and move as and when I can or when I need to. I won’t be held hostage to a company that treats its customers in this manner. Would also add that 30% discount is an insult, 50% would be a joke.
As I said, if you want to take a giant loss on all of that equipment just because you have the 1 Connect Amp and a Bridge, I’m prepared to be a buyer. I don’t mean that to be argumentative -- anyone you sell to will be investing in something you no longer believe in (i.e. they will believe in it). But I also am not sure which company everyone is going to switch to that doesn’t do this already -- or is guaranteed not to do the very same thing. The only real solution is to not invest in any of these products and wire your whole house with speaker wire.
What is astonishing is Sonos and its engineers must have known this day was coming for years. And the best solution they could come up with is to nobble a user's entire system if they have a legacy speaker in it?
It is not good enough and shows that profit over customer experience rules at this company. This is and should be a PR disaster. Now every user will be wondering when their system will no longer receive upgrades, when streaming services may suddenly stop working or at least new features not be available to them. This has introduced a untenable level of uncertainty into a system that many users have paid a lot of money to set up.
I for one will begin looking at alternatives going forward. I simply won't reward a company for being this bloody minded.
Long term, I am thinking of keeping my Sonos speakers on Legacy, and using the Sonos controller just to group and ungroup speakers and control their volume.
For music streaming, I’ll set up Emby or Plex on a cheap Linux system (maybe a Raspberry Pi) and send the output to my Connect’s line in. Then all I need to do is group my Connect with the other rooms where I want music to play. We almost never stream two different services at the same time--in fact, I don’t think we ever have--so no problems there with a single source system.
It adds an extra UI step: go to Emby/Plex for the music selection, and Sonos Controller for volume and grouping, but the Sonos UI on mobile devices is so bad now that it feels like a lateral move, anyway.
This is my thoughts at this point as well. I could build my own control with my current Homeseer Integration.
As long as they don’t break the UPNP, there will be plenty of ways to integrate/automate with 3rd party smart hubs, to control grouping and even playing. Smartthings, Control4, Homeseer, etc all have working integrations.
I just hope and pray that we can add Legacy units to our Legacy system, or even better, purchase new equipment and run in Legacy Mode.
Interesting times ahead.
This is an important question to get clarified. Is legacy mode sustainable with the ability to add devices or is it frozen such that no further changes are allowed and you can’t add anything new?
This new thread didn’t clarify the most important points I had read in the previous thread. Answer these please...
Will future controller apps and pc based software continue to work with legacy systems? (with existing functionality)
Can Legacy and Modern speakers be grouped together?
Will legacy systems allow other legacy speakers to be added after May?
Will you allow hardware with various versions of Sonos OS to work side by side on a single Sonos network?
I mainly use a NAS with my Sonos and rarely use streaming services. Will I still be able to do this after May?
Sonos do not delete the other thread.
Mirrors my concerns although do also use streaming
@matthew.bacon and @attacama40 my previous post in this thread answers some of those questions, but you might have missed.
I believe this is the answer you’re looking for: You will be able get the app that works with a legacy system to use on new mobile devices, or if you accidentally delete it.
You would either have a legacy system with legacy devices and modern devices, or a modern system and a legacy system. If it’s all one legacy system, than yes, they’ll group together, but if it’s two separate systems, than they’re two, separate systems.
You will be able to add products to your legacy systems. We'll have more to share on the experience come May.
No, Sonos players are a system and won’t operate properly with different versions in one system.
Yes, if you mostly use the NAS drive, the only likely change with your system will be that you’ll stop getting updates. Everything else will continue to function exactly as it does today. Streaming services will work the same as well, but at some time in the future, service software changes might cause it to degrade or stop working.
Despite increasing anger with the organisation (from an originally disappointed base), I appreciate your attempts here Ryan to introduce at least some clarity here. It helps for sure.
I’m not the smartest tech person so need have a proper read and understand. But thanks for at least addressing some of the Q’s raised. Good or bad as they may be it is as least a step in direction.
How to blow a reputation that's taken years to build in a single day. A masterclass in how to lose customers.
You're going to have to back track faster and deeper this to have any chance of me buying any of your products ever again.
I am off to return the Moves I received for Christmas. Best Buy doesn’t need the original box, just speaker and wires. I am never going to spend another dime on SONOS. I feel awful recommending them to all of my friends too! 30% off?…..CRIMINAL!
Anyone could set this up very easily should the Sonos System die when the Sonos Upgrade cocks up.
Don’t hold your breath……
Also thank you @AdrianB100 for the links above.
EDIT - Whilst I was writing the post from @AdrianB100 with the CEO’s Email address has mysteriously disappeared. I was just going to use it!
Trading up would be fine for me, but 30% is a joke, at 75% I would consider trading up. You lost a loyal customer that promoted your products to family and friends for over 10 years. This is a really bad move and I doubt your “damage control” is going to work.
Exactly, especially after prices were just hiked. All planned out, sadly.
I'm so confused. The first lines says this:
"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. "
then they say this:
" You can continue to use your whole system in legacy mode - in this case, it will stop receiving updates and new features. "
So, will they continue to support the existing experience on legacy speakers, or not? I’m OK with Sonos not providing new features on legacy equipment. But I’d like to keep using what I am using today for streaming services. The first sentence seems to indicate you will be committed to keeping the existing experience going (yay) but then the second sentence says you won’t do any more updates.
Which is it?
I asked this in the second post of this thread and did not receive a clear response.
Are there any lawyers out there as it seems highly dubious to me for a vendor to take money off a customer for a product for that vendor to then by its actions render that product useless.. with no compensation
30% off! Really! What a F...g insult.. like i will ever buy another Sonos product after them treating their customers with such utter contempt…
What they should, do but of course wont, is fully compensate cost of scrapped products or replace with equivalent or upgrade existing… they wont do that as too expensive so they would rather screw us over and see their reputation collapse...
I too have over $1000 in Sonos products, and have always been a promoter of the products! I find it terrible that the only way they choose to reward loyalty is by offering a discount and then bricking my perfectly working speakers that I paid hard earned money to buy. Why not give a discount and allow legacy equipment to still function! I was considering upgrading but not at the cost of bricking my old equipment! Time to research the competition!!
We could copy that onto pretty much any major electronics’ company message board, and it would apply to them. Apple no longer supports the iPhone 4.
And how many of your iPhone 5-11’s stopped receiving updates when the iPhone 4 got end of life’d?
Not good closing a thread and opening a new one, just update the orignal!
Please can you explain why you misled people by saying only 10 weeks ago on Twitter that “We have no plans to suddenly make these devices obsolete. We're simply offering our users an eco-friendly way to upgrade their older players.”
Holy moly! I was already angry at the blatant money grab by a once reputable company. But this exposes them as downright liars as well
I’m done!
So I have THREE Play 5 units but only two are eligible for trade in. Why? My Sonos Connect is not eligible but my Connect Amp is! What kind of support is that?!!!
@User443206, they all should be, you might need to contact our team directly to look into what might be causing the trouble with your account. I do know that recently registered devices might not show as trade up eligible for an hour or so after registration if you just plugged those in.
Ryan…..I have not just added anything but am, currently, checking when I last purchased a Sonos product as I think it may have been 2013/14 so I am not too happy at all. Quite frankly, 30% is an insult to your loyal customers considering the cost of these items in the first place and I, for one, not only do not have spare money to throw away on the next set of Sonos products that will, no doubt, also reach redundancy when I can buy perfectly good items that will be less ‘tech’ but deliver what I need. I will also be reading the ‘small print’ with a magnifying glass because, effectively, Sonos are making perfectly workable items unfit for purpose - I hope Sonos have enough money set aside for redundancy packages of staff because when sales take a nose dive, as they will I am sure, Sonos will have to think long and hard about the numbers they employ in my opinion. A very sad and frustrating time for everyone.
Well you’ve lost an other royal customer. Reason, letting your exsisting customer base down. Why is it not possible to freeze the code base on legacy products and just provide bug fixes, including the UI app on IOS and android. Not having an app that works with older code releases is a definite killer. I’ve managed to fend off all upgrade requests after the CR100 debacle, but it is a real pain being forced to set auto app updates off on my phone just for the pleasure of Sonos not willing to maintain different versions for their app. I am a very pissed of customer who never ever will invest a penny on any sonos product anymore!!
Everyone needs to go to trust pilot.com, and every review site they can think of, and let Sonos know how they feel!
tempting
Sonos NASDAQ: SONO share price is already dropping !!
I am trying to keep my cool here. Noticed everybody is dumping Sonos gear on Craigslist now.
I think I am going to do that as well to get out of the ecosystem. I have a connect amp, and Play 5. Play 5 I bought in 2015. To me, it is still new.
How about working with the app developers, to preserve the legacy apps, such as Spotify. Keep new and old separate. If you allow a core group of apps to be available to keep the legacy running, that could help.
I think you need to increase to trade up to 40% to take some of the sting out. And sales tax should be applied after the discount, not before. Remember this is $600+ each gear we are talking about. It works perfectly fine in its current state. Allowing the community to preserve a perfectly functioning piece of equipment is your only hope to prevent the backlash that you may not recover from, not to mention the carbon footprint you are creating,
Hello to Sonos and their community.
I haven’t read every single comment on this thread, but it would seem that a lot of people are unhappy. My comment, for what it’s worth, is that I bear no animosity towards Sonos. It is inevitable that this will happen to every “smart” device at some point. Sonos, are just the first to do it. To name a few, we have had Bose, Yamaha, Denon, and B&O speakers over the last couple of years. We were in search of superior sound and only found it in Sonos. Where Bose is concerned, they do have a relatively good sound, but the software and services that are included in both their SoundTouch, and Smart devices, is incredibly limited. We had many negative experiences, with every device, until we bought Sonos. Yes, their “legacy” announcement was a shock, but it is not going to be the only company to do this. Sonos are just the first to do it. The hardware in their “legacy” devices, has simply reached its limit and can no longer be “confidently” updated. If Sonos are to remain ahead of their competitors, in a saturated market, then they have to make controversial and difficult decisions such as this.
Perhaps you are right… but for me it requires a new investment of $5,500 to modernize 16 components in order to get full use out of the 10 more recent ones.
as a long term Sonos advocate don’t you think they would have a better solution for folks like myself rather than alienating us?
Right now I am screaming from the rooftops about how this is a company profiteering off the backs of people that helped make them successful.
Hey,
To clarify, I am not begrudging anyone’s right to complain. I do totally get that a “whole-home device replacement” would be expensive. I am stating that this kind of “legacy” announcement will happen more and more often, by almost every “smart” provider, eventually. None of the “legacy” devices are going to suddenly stop working in May. Therefore, purchasing a replacement Sonos device/system is not going to be necessary. Yes, currently, it appears that there will be a problem updating the software on non-legacy devices, if they remain connected in a system that contains both “legacy” and “non-legacy” devices. I can imagine how that feels, but I have read that Sonos are trying to find a way to overcome this initial problem. Hopefully, they will. I object to you calling me a “long term Sonos advocate”, because I am not. I was sharing my view and understanding, along with our personal experiences of other providers, which is allowed.We do like our Sonos devices, but this doesn’t make me an “advocate”. Additionally, the “long term” part of your comment is incorrect, we have only purchased Sonos devices over the last couple of months. Indeed, we are happy with Sonos, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t recognise how others are feeling. Most, would appear to share your desire to scream from the rooftops and are too feeling alienated. Unfortunately, I personally, cannot help you, or others that share your sentiments. Take care.
Just seen on the BBC that my play 5 means my 8 Sonos ones will no longer get updates from May.
I was about to add voice control to my set in April as a birthday upgrade. But as it will only work for a month before the setup will be obsolete or I spend my birthday money simply replacing the 5 just to keep the set where it is, what is the point of getting any Sonos products?
Does anyone know if this is usual for wifi speaker manufacturers to give them just a 5-year life? Had I know this 6 years ago when I was looking at the play 5 I would have thought twice before buying Sonos. Once bitten twice shy.
I was just about to post on the original thread, I pressed “Send” and the system reports that the thread is closed? OK, then I’ll take my comments to a third-party like BBC News.
I think it’s fair to say, that the anger will continue on this new thread anyway, I don’t think the idea of this thread being ‘answers to technical questions raised’ will cut it.
Good idea, re going to external media, as Sonos are clearly not listening so far.
I see that the story is now on the top of the BBC tech page.
Hardly surprising, as by Sonos’s own figures, 37% of their revenue comes from existing owners. Not any more though.
They’ve actually made the front page news of the whole site (right hand side).
I have a feeling revenue will drop by at least 37%
Hello to Sonos and their community.
I haven’t read every single comment on this thread, but it would seem that a lot of people are unhappy. My comment, for what it’s worth, is that I bear no animosity towards Sonos. It is inevitable that this will happen to every “smart” device at some point. Sonos, are just the first to do it. To name a few, we have had Bose, Yamaha, Denon, and B&O speakers over the last couple of years. We were in search of superior sound and only found it in Sonos. Where Bose is concerned, they do have a relatively good sound, but the software and services that are included in both their SoundTouch, and Smart devices, is incredibly limited. We had many negative experiences, with every device, until we bought Sonos. Yes, their “legacy” announcement was a shock, but it is not going to be the only company to do this. Sonos are just the first to do it. The hardware in their “legacy” devices, has simply reached its limit and can no longer be “confidently” updated. If Sonos are to remain ahead of their competitors, in a saturated market, then they have to make controversial and difficult decisions such as this.
@davidsjones76 yep take on board that viewpoint...but SONOS are only offering 30% discount on an upgrade for products which were in the CUSTOMERS eyes brand new only a few years ago for which hundreds or thousands of pounds have been spent. A larger discount on the upgrade would be more palatable, surely the profit margin is more than 30% on this kit, then if so do it at cost, if not surely it makes commercial sense to offer a massive discount or make them free...take the hit, keep your loyal customer base in tact, keep them wanting to buy more because of your ethical ethos...keep them singing the virtues of SONOS...that’s gotta pay dividends in the long-run
