Retired Sonos Staff

End of Software Support - Clarifications

Dec 8, 2022 11:29 AM UTC
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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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andy_120

Enthusiast II

Really!!!! You have no base to make an assumption like this, there is such a thing as a vendor having old stock. But if your ok about 2k being written off you have more money to burn than I have. Please pay for my upgrade

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ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

I buy all my Sonos kit from a company called Smart Home Systems which is an authorised Sonos agent in the UK.

Originally I thought you were saying you had a legacy Connect:Amp, but you don’t. You are good till 2023 or early 2024, at least (maybe longer per Sonos), so this doesn’t impact you now.

Is there a list of model numbers for the legacy\modern versions of connect and connect:amp. I’ve just ordered a connect to replace a “legacy” connect and want to make sure its the 256mb version when it arrives. I cant see SONOS ever doing this again, so pretty sure they will work to keep in the 256mb memory footprint….well I hope so. :)

The easiest thing to look for seems to be a play/pause icon on the front button. If it shows a mute button, it’s legacy. That’s true for both the connect and connect amp.

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sambeny

Lyricist III

Call me old fashioned - I am reading a lot of comments giving ideas to Sonos on how they can get more money out of us: subscription, charging for software updates etc. That is the wrong path to take for existing customers ; I bought speakers (hardware) and I just want them to work in the same way as they do when I bought them and now. No need for updates or upgrades - i want them to deliver for many years just like my old wired Bose speakers connected to my old Technics amp did (before I give them away). Or have I got it wrong and went for the wrong product in the first place. It would have cost much less to have an electrician wire a few speakers around the house. Maybe some startup can work out a way to bypass Sonos and be able to use Sonos speakers as any speaker… Anyway, if this is it then I wish Sonos goes bust - I will have gambled £2500 and lost. One thing is sure, Sonos will never get a penny more from me.

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ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

Really!!!! You have no base to make an assumption like this, there is such a thing as a vendor having old stock. But if your ok about 2k being written off you have more money to burn than I have. Please pay for my upgrade

Selling someone 4+ year old old stock at full price instead of the upgraded model is very scammy. But that isn’t what happened. The guy has the new Connect:amp that is modern/fine.

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goodboyr

Trending Lyricist I

I’m going to repeat a point I made in a previous thread about the unique situation surrounding Connect Amps. Around the time of the changeover between “old” Connect amps and the new ones (2015) it was possible to walk into a store, and buy either without knowing that one was going to be EOL’d much sooner than the other. In fact that’s what happened to me. 4 Connect amps all purchased at the same time, two are the old low memory ones, two are not. There are consumer protection laws that should guard against this.

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SonosManu

Enthusiast II

The only thing at this point that will change the mind of sonos is what the share price does as a result of this.

Make no mistake investors will be reading all these sorts of comments and taking a view on what this decision means for Sonos revenue.

Market opens in a couple of hours - watch this space.

I wish but the share price only dropped by 0.6% yesterday so I don’t think that investors are that worry about the whole thing.

It wasnt the media sh*tstorm while the markets were open that it is today. Its also gathering pace with articles and threads on reddit discussing how the “hardware limitation” line, is BS.

Lets not forget the original xbox had 64mb of ram, so devices with just 32 should be more than capable of playing streamed audio. This is a combination of lazy programming and a company wanting to adopt the Apple forced obsoletion of devices. Audio devices, and specifically whole home multi thousand pound/dollar set ups are not throw away in five year hardware.

It would be technically possible for Sonos to offer aproduct that is a man in the middle to retain harmony over a muti device system that contains both “legacy” and current hardware. Given they simply act as tcp clients and stream, Sonos could choose not to make products legacy for a longer period of time. This is a smash and grab on existing customer base good will. They even knew it would be seen as such last year.

mmm +0.85% pre-market! Not going down (at least for the moment)

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DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

Pick a product and leave 1 star review: Product obsolete within 5 years. Sonos stop supporting their products after 5 years!

https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/reviews/consumer/form?pr_page_id=one&pr_merchant_id=411151&pr_api_key=cc48e875-2a83-4fb9-a513-164a041971fa&pr_merchant_group_id=14196

When i try to leave a 1 star review i get this

We're sorry, an error has occurred while loading necessary components. We are looking into the problem. Please try again later.

I wonder if this somehow broke down, by “accident”

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melvimbe

Let's say that Spotify make the hypothetical fundamental change you refer to. So what? So one of my more capable units has to decode the stream and I have to group my older kit with it to be able to play it. No problem with that AT ALL. If that's what they’d announced nobody would have raised more than a grumble.

Note - THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY ALREADY DO FOR THE AIRPLAY/NON-AIRPLAY UNITS.

Just a comment regarding this solution. You are correct that airplay/non-airplay units operate under this fashion, but it hasn’t been exactly a satisfactory solution to customers. It’s not uncommon for customers to be confused about how this all works, complain that their non-airplay units don’t work on their own, or that they have to group speakers for it to work. People have grumbled about this.

If as you’re suggesting, Sonos eventually used the same model in order to continue streaming Spotfiy, then people would make the same complaints as they did about airplay. They would als be upset that Spotify is not working as it always had before. And of course, the people who only have legacy products could not take advantage of this solution.

All that said, people generally do accept airplay for what it is after being informed that airplay has hardware requirements that are out of Sonos control. They don’t like it, but they accept it.

In the situations you've outlined though, the customers are ‘at fault’ and Sonos are genuinely doing the right thing. Old hardware (as far as I am aware) can't be made to support airplay - the grouping solution is genuinely the right way of extending the function of that hardware for as long as possible.

I wasn’t referring to whether it was the right or wrong solution, only about how customers reacted to that solution.

In the ‘Spotify’ scenario, a scenario in which something has changed which the older hardware genuinely can't support then it’s absolutely fine for Sonos’ older hardware to not support it and while you're right that some users won’t understand that the user base as a whole would.

I don’t know that you can say that the user base as a whole would understand. Or even if they did, it does not mean they will see it as a acceptable solution. Some will even state that this eventual/potential scenario is something that Sonos should have advertised to them 5 years ago (or whenever) when they first bought the speakers.

Nobody’s expecting Sonos to work magic and make old hardware do something it can’t, they’re expecting them to make a genuine effort to keep old hardware working as it does now, not prematurely kill it to try and extort repeat purchases from customers who already gave them their money once.

You stated above that customers can be at fault for expecting airplay to operate in a way that is not possible given the hardware, and that some users would not understand why Spotify may hypothetically stop working as it does today.

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Danny

G

garry_redknap

Lyricist III

I buy all my Sonos kit from a company called Smart Home Systems which is an authorised Sonos agent in the UK.

Originally I thought you were saying you had a legacy Connect:Amp, but you don’t. You are good till 2023 or early 2024, at least (maybe longer per Sonos), so this doesn’t impact you now.

Is there a list of model numbers for the legacy\modern versions of connect and connect:amp. I’ve just ordered a connect to replace a “legacy” connect and want to make sure its the 256mb version when it arrives. I cant see SONOS ever doing this again, so pretty sure they will work to keep in the 256mb memory footprint….well I hope so. :)

The easiest thing to look for seems to be a play/pause icon on the front button. If it shows a mute button, it’s legacy. That’s true for both the connect and connect amp.

Awesome, many thanks. Have just received it and it has a play\pause button. That should keep me sorted for at least the next 5 years.

Now I wait for their retraction and realise I've wasted another £300 :)

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A

andy_120

Enthusiast II

Really!!!! You have no base to make an assumption like this, there is such a thing as a vendor having old stock. But if your ok about 2k being written off you have more money to burn than I have. Please pay for my upgrade

Selling someone 4+ year old old stock at full price instead of the upgraded model is very scammy. But that isn’t what happened. The guy has the new Connect:amp that is modern/fine.

Yes I can see that, the post appeared whilst I was writing the reply

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