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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ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

I am with the crowd that is really upset with this announcement. I too am an early adopter of Sonos. This “change” means that thousands of dollars of investment in a great sound system was foolishly spent.

In addition after spending over $2000 on Play:5s, you are telling me for another $1400 I can replace my Play:5s with lower quality Sonos Moves?!?! How does that even make sense! At least your upgrade program should be like for like! And a discount for more the 30% would be better.

I am soooo mad that I am considering ditching my whole Sonos installations.

Sonos you really need to take better care of your early loyal customers as they are the ones who keep buying more speakers to expand their systems. (like me)

Best

...and remember … it says their new devices will now be supported with software updates for only 5 years …. Who would buy this price of product with such short-term built-in obsolescence. That’s more like a mobile phone than a home speaker system! They’re trying to blackmail us into paying 70% of the cost we already paid for an updated version of something that is pristine, works fine and is nowhere near the end of it’s life. The new products of course need absolutely endless updates to point of the system being a complete pain in the nick-nacks! This may suit Sonos but it doesn’t suit me and their customer base is all they have… Great eco credentials too Sonos!

That’s not what it says. What it says is 5 years after they stop selling the product. So if you buy a Beam, which has been on the market for a year and will likely be sold for at least 5 years, you then get 5 years minimum after that. So 10 years. Note that 10 years for tech is a really long time. The original iPhone came out 13 years ago, for instance. There was no Samsung Galaxy or tablets or anything. Totally different universe. Who even knows if we’ll still be using iPhones in 10 years or what the next devices will require to interface with Sonos.

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IJN

Renowned Enthusiast I

Not quite what Im hoping for : I’d like to be able to group ALL where they have software in common (the lowest level denominator) and only the modern when the software is beyond the handling capabilities of the legacy units i.e. only when using the newer, memory hungry features would a whole home group not be possible. I wouldn't like to see a permanent wall between modern and legacy units unnecessarily

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bonervz

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.

Exactly. it's really a simple solution... all they had to do was create a new LOW COST bridge product that would tie to your streaming services and re-stream within your LAN to the legacy products...
New stream in and legacy stream out. Piece o’piss.

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Sonos from leader to loser in 2020.

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Razorhog

Enthusiast II

That second email should have simply said “we know you are upset about the previous email. Sorry it was poorly worded. Please stay tuned as I try to figure out exactly what is going on and convey it in a manner that isn’t confusing.”

All it did was reiterate what we’re already pissed off about. What do you mean “Split network for legacy devices”?? Meh.

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licenced

Avid Contributor I

Those are the two legacy versions of the Connect:Amp that I have seen. Notice both have a mute symbol on the button, but the Sonos logo on the first one is older. The newer Sonos logo was also later used with the play/pause button. That’s the modern version. So the modern one looks like this (sorry the photos keep rotating when I upload them):

And in 2015 both kinds were in the marketplace, without any description distinguishing the difference, so people like me bought a mix without knowledge or understanding of the difference……...until now. Does that seem right?? Same price, same name, different life and functionality…….

Have found on ebay an AMP with a serial starting 1412, indicating it was manufactured in 2014, but it has the new logo and play/pause button. Am assuming this is ‘modern’, but is that a gamble?

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DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

I think that’s the plan. You’ll be able to group legacy with legacy and new with new, but not group a legacy speaker with a newer one because they will reside on separate Sonos networks. I also hope this is because DTS, DD+, (maybe Atmos?) and some high res solution are coming.

But that is still a bit of kick in the nuts, as some people have a playbar and then 2 play 5 gen 1 as rear speakers.

In that situation the Play 5’s are just “dumb” devices that play what they are told by the playbar, and the playbar would decode the DTS and so on.

But still, basically since they are on different groups, they will not work as rear speakers for the sorround system.

Luckily i have Play 1’s for rear speakers so i can enjoy my sorround setup for a few more years before the one’s (And possibly the playbar) will be bricked by Sonos because they want to boost sales once again.

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bonervz

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”

Yep same error. They don’t like a mob with pitch forks and torches!

Absolutely done on purpose.

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Sonos from leader to loser in 2020.

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Razorhog

Enthusiast II

Those are the two legacy versions of the Connect:Amp that I have seen. Notice both have a mute symbol on the button, but the Sonos logo on the first one is older. The newer Sonos logo was also later used with the play/pause button. That’s the modern version. So the modern one looks like this (sorry the photos keep rotating when I upload them):

And in 2015 both kinds were in the marketplace, without any description distinguishing the difference, so people like me bought a mix without knowledge or understanding of the difference……...until now. Does that seem right?? Same price, same name, different life and functionality…….

Exactly! I bought my amp in 2017 ffs.

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ewolkoff

Enthusiast II

I think that’s the plan. You’ll be able to group legacy with legacy and new with new, but not group a legacy speaker with a newer one because they will reside on separate Sonos networks. I also hope this is because DTS, DD+, (maybe Atmos?) and some high res solution are coming.

But that is still a bit of kick in the nuts, as some people have a playbar and then 2 play 5 gen 1 as rear speakers.

In that situation the Play 5’s are just “dumb” devices that play what they are told by the playbar, and the playbar would decode the DTS and so on.

But still, basically since they are on different groups, they will not work as rear speakers for the sorround system.

Luckily i have Play 1’s for rear speakers so i can enjoy my sorround setup for a few more years before the one’s (And possibly the playbar) will be bricked by Sonos because they want to boost sales once again.

I mean, I agree. It is tough given how expensive these products are. But I can understand why something with 32 mb cannot decode high res audio over Dolby Atmos. Unfortunately Sonos’s system is interconnected so the design, at it’s very core, requires everything to be able to have the same streaming and processing capability at a base level to communicate with the rest of the system. They could maybe develop bridge like boxes that plug into Ethernet ports of every legacy device and maybe that would work. But those are 10/100 ports - they may be too slow to process the data. And, they probably don’t want to be in the business of developing and supporting that. Not saying it’s a great result for all (it hurt me to retire 4 legacy products), but I understand it.

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Joe_43

Contributor I

I have been a loyal Sonos customer for well over ten years. I have I think 25 devices in the house - 16 are on the legacy email list.

Doing the math to replace the equipment - with the 30% off, it’s still almost net $8500 out of my pocket.

This is crazy! My wife and three kids use Sonos to play- throughout the house/pool- our Itunes, Sirius, Amazon Music, etc. We don’t do really anything fancy but simply just play music.

What are other reliable vendors that are worth considering for replacement? It’s a tough decision, but I just don’t want to just give Sonos $8.5k so that we can continue to just play music in the house.

What exactly is the benefit of adding the memory to the units and doing the replacements? What are the new features that we will just need to have or want at that cost? This hasn’t really been explained or marketed well at all.

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