End of Software Support - Clarifications

After 24 hours and 55 pages of comments (before it was closed) none of which are complimentary, here is my 2p worth.

As a past product marketing manager, here are a few key points to take into consideration when announcing a products end of support.

1. Give lots of notice and take into account how recently customers have purchased the product.

> 4 months is no notice at all really, I would expect 12 months to be reasonable, or 6 as an absolute minimum. I bought my first components in Jan 2015 and now my Connect Amp and Play 5 are declared end of support after this relatively short time.

2. Offer a painless route to upgrade the system.

> Offering 30% discount is far from painless, it is a significant additional investment just to retain current functionality. The idea also of scrapping the old hardware to recycling or worse landfill is outrageous. At least leave the units to be used for as long as they can, as by your own admission, that may not be long.

Consider a swap out at cost plus support expenses to make the exchange palatable. The current discount must still bring a good profit unless your margins are poor.

3. Be VERY clear about why you are doing this, the future benefits and the implications of retaining the current hardware.

I expect cost is the real driver here, memory and processing power is just a limitation as branching code and distributing two versions is  not rocket science, but at least he honest. I understand that sonos cannot predict what may happen with future changes to streaming services, but the total lack of clarity and certainty beggars belief. How long till the rest of my system is obsoleted as I now know I will be lucky to get 4 months notice. What great new ground breaking features are coming in May that is forcing this end of support for older speakers? The dual system possibly seems to something that may or may not work, but little information is being offered about it, we are promised more info in May. Will there still be an upgrade offer when the system breaks eventually, or is this just a short term offer? 

So in all you have made a real error of judgement here and have an uphill climb to resolve it, if that is even possible now. The sonos name is now badly tarnished and only a retraction and complete rethink of this proposal has any chance to recover the mess created. I really do hope some people from sonos are taking action based on this thread. Having closed the old tgread, posted a few minor clarifications and started a new one, I fear sonos simply aren't listening and underestimate the impact this will ultimately have on the company. 

Whilst i understand the need for software updates, this smells like a really stinking marketing strategy to me. Customers buy the products and because they are expensive (lets not kid ourselves here as they really are compared to other brands available) they buy them once, perhaps add one or two more and then do not purchase any further Sonos products over a length if over ten years. Then Sonos realise they are not making enough revenue so they decide to make existing customers products obsolete so they have to spend money again with Sonos to trade up to the latest technology.

30% off to trade up! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA……Surely you can do better than that if you want to keep these effected customers?

To be honest, we should all have seen this coming. Look at mobile phone manufacturers. It has been proven that they incorporate planned obsolescence in their products. That’s why your phone starts getting glitchy when your contract is up for renewal. Encourages us to buy the latest products again.

I also love how Sonos will recycle the old products for us. So we send them the products and then they can strip them and use the parts again in their manufacturing saving themselves money in the long run. You couldn’t make this up!!! Ha ha ha ha

Once my Sonos system is bricked i will move my business elsewhere. But saying that, this will happen with other speaker brands so is there any point purchasing wi-fi speakers at all when they will become obsolete so quickly. They are obviously not good value for money

Maybe it’s time we all stuck two fingers up to streaming products and go back to playing music on traditional speakers like our grandads old hi-fi!

Great customer service Sonos!

Have to say a new thread with direction and answers is appreciated and what was requested.

Shutting off a strong message  by simply closing a thread is pouring petrol over a firework box! Why on earth would you?

My input to date has been measured. At this point I’m about to join the **** You tribe.

Really? Is this the way to do business? This is mutually assured destruction on a commercial scale I’ve never seen.

On every level possible totally mis-managed. 

This is, as you well know, self-contradictory. The Sonos platform has ALWAYS since day one been sold as an integrated ecosystem that plays music from remote sources. With the exception of the 3.5mm input on some devices, there is literally no way to play music without a network service of some kind. The nature of network services, especially, but not solely, streaming services is that the interfaces change over time and clients that wish to integrate have to be modified in-step.

Refusing to provide maintenance updates to a product that relies on integrated services for its core function is 100% killing it dead. We just don’t know the exact time of death yet.

This is, as you well know, disingenuous. It would be ENTIRELY possible to split the codebase such that the older devices keep their original feature set while the newer devices move on. The streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are going to change and necessitate updates to the Sonos devices, yes, but until such time as Apple switches to projecting holograms of the musicians in to your home they’re not going to change to an extent that the older devices can’t handle.

Implicit in what you’re saying here is that you currently DON’T do this, and so my Play 5 is currently carrying the weight of all the features you’ve put in your codebase that it can’t use. Here’s an idea - strip all that bollocks out and use the extra resource to maintain support for the Play 5’s feature set.

Some of your partners do enhance their software over time, that’s true. As a secondary tip, perhaps Sonos could try this rather than just killing bits of it off *cough* desktop Sonos controller software *cough*. I’m not sure I could tell you anything that’s changed in the Sonos app the whole time I’ve had it.

Explain to us one good technical reason why a play 5 that has been able to handle a synchronised audio stream for the last 5 years is suddenly going to stop being able to do so. Not got one? Good. Now explain to us why one of the more modern products won’t be able to send a play 5 one of these audio streams as it does today.

At this point you deserve kudos for simply having the gall to keep presenting this extortion as if it’s some sort of perk to the current customer base. Well done, you have a bright future in PR.

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

So sounds like you’re saying that if a third party - Apple, Amazon or whoever - changes their software you won’t update legacy products to cope? I find it very hard to believe that the “lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products” would stop you.

Given I have QUAD equipment from the 1950’s (22 and IIs) and that they still support it by way of repair at a reasonable cost, I don’t expect all my SONOS kit to become redundant after 10 years or less. In addition QUAD has been owned by a Chinese company for a number of years but still support legacy kit.

Quick question: even with a 30% discount, who in their right mind would replace redundant SONOS kit with new SONOS kit????

Have Sonos closed the other thread to stop the negative feedback? They clearly do not know who to deal with customers. I am yet to come across a customer who thinks this is a good idea.

Sonos has some of the loyalist consumers you will find I imagine as we buy products to extend our current system without giving much of a thought to other manufacturers. For me that will change and almost ten years of loyalty to Sonos has ended and I will look to replace my “legacy” Play:5 device with something non sonos and leave the rest of my “Modern” Sonos system intact.

Let's be clear, the reasoning of devices reaching technical limits is just a poor excuse.

Those devices being categorised as legacy need do nothing more than receive an audio stream.

It is ENTIRELY possible for this to be done by having another device in the mesh/network do the processing and pass this stream to a legacy device.

It could be achieved by either the addition of a separate single box in the mesh controlling this, or existing more powerful devices processing the audio for its legacy neighbour/s.

It is exactly the same principal as your wireless headphones with 2mb ram being able to play sound while your phone, ipad whatever does the work of receiving, transcodeing and transmitting the stream.

This move by sonos, coupled with it's new hardware having a "5 year support" line is nothing but a transition toward making sonos a disposable item like a smartphone.

A single smartphone in my pocket may be disposable every 5 years.

A 20 zone multi room music system with a £6000 ($8000) price tag, is NOT a 5 year disposable item for me.

To the FOOLS @Sonos who thought that abandoning a dedicated existing customer base w/forced obsolescence was a good business decision, #FAIL Like others, I have $1000’s of dollars invested in a system that you now tell me is obsolete & might as well be bricked. I have “evangelized” Sonos for MANY years, have systems all over my house, & its likely the most used of any technology, except our phones, in our house.

I will NOT “trade-up” NOR purchase another Sonos product & will now proceed to ditch every last one of these bricks while I can get some $$ on eBay or other site. Perhaps some other SPEAKER company will take my $$$ w/o killing the hardware I already own.

Goodbye, Sonos.

Everything I has already been said by others but I want to add a post to this because the numbers matter when a company runs analytics on consumer response.

Sonos, please consider this to be one more post clarifying that I will never buy another Sonos product again, your “trade up” program is a joke, and I’m deeply disappointed that the money I spent on what I thought was a quality product has clearly been wasted. In the era of a Climate Crisis, the environmental impact of deciding to turn perfectly good audio devices into a mountain of e-waste is unspeakably irresponsible.

Sonos, you have lost track of what people were buying your product for.  It was to hear good music accessed in a way that was convenient and centralized.  I can do that today and you’re telling me I won’t be able to do that tomorrow.  I don’t really care what new features you bring in because I don’t need them.  I need my system to do exactly what it has been doing since the day I paid for it.

None.

Dont buy sonos.

Your overpriced equipment will be 'bricked' by the company on a whim.

Check out Bluesound…

A disgruntled ex-sonos fan now stuck with year-old play5s ehich woll be landfill in June. 

Shame on sonos.

Greetings, All (though SONOS probably won’t read this; they’ll all be lying down in darkened rooms or revising their CVs).

Having followed this for a few days of days (has it only been that long?), here are my (final) thoughts. 

I’ve been researching and collating quite a lot recently and this is the repository of my current impressions.  I’ll be posting it in both https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-support-clarifications-6835969 and https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/the-sonos-brexit-and-a-pragmatic-way-past-it-6836056 .  Apologies if this is long; it’s become complex; but is definitely no rant, just my personal views.

The CEO’s email does nothing to allay my own fears going forward.  I have legacy and ‘modern’ (for now) dumb, (not voice) audio devices within ear-shot of each other.  My only route is to keep my system locked in its present form as they confirm that legacy and modern system areas cannot be grouped in synchrony https://en.community.sonos.com/wireless-speakers-228992/will-i-still-be-able-to-group-new-and-old-products-together-and-receive-updates-on-newer-products-6836043 .  I suspect this is a consequence of the decision that SONOS made in its infancy to have distributed rather than centralized intelligence using a Precision Time Protocol (probably IEEE 1588-2002).  This is worth a read: https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/how-it-started but I expect it’s had consequences as soon as the design philosophy was set; the 65k limit for example and the inability to use anything other than PCM stereo.  SONOS architecture was set with “Any Song. Any Room.”  Frankly anything else has always been a stretch and I suspect this distributed intelligence would preclude the much vaulted request to have a central memory hub handling legacy devices.

SONOS’ recent decision over legacy devices may eventually open up lots of new possibilities, which the user community has been asking for on these pages for many years.  These could include bluetooth, and any number of ‘cinema’ enhancements (DTS or Dolby Atmos), but clearly voice seems to be something of a next step after buying Snips (https://investors.sonos.com/news-and-events/investor-news/latest-news/2019/Sonos-Announces-Acquisition-of-Snips/default.aspx).  In order to make use of this it will have to weather its recent storm.  For the time being SONOS is a cash-wealthy company; I think Snips cost $37M and back in September 2019 they announced a $50M stock buy back programme.  They apparently have $298.5M cash (https://thefly.com/landingPageNews.php?id=2957758&headline=SONO-Sonos-approves-M-share-repurchase-program). SONOS has also been bringing to market a lot of new devices and speakers in recent years.  While most of these are just new versions of old, the line-up has expanded with ‘architectural solutions’ (speakers to you and me) and the Move.  I think this has been long overdue and may have tempted new adopters to multi-room ecosystems to plump for SONOS in comparison to any of the increasing number of alternatives, especially for people with outdoor spaces.  The point here is even new versions or old solutions plus the new devices will have been expensive to develop.  I think SONOS has been wise to expand its line-up.

Among technology journalists, the reaction to SONOS’ decision over legacy devices has been a bit of a shrug, in my opinion.  Lots of “Well, what do you expect from tech?”, “SONOS has been brave in coming clean over this” and “This is probably the first, but not the last time we hear of this”.  In contrast, the user community has been livid.  Within a few hours of the announcement the first forum (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-updates-for-legacy-products-6835470) had 1378 replies, 53464 views and reached 56 pages before being closed down for reasons that I cannot fathom, except SONOS didn’t like what they were hearing.  The later one (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-support-clarifications-6835969) now stands at roughly 2250 replies, 97,882 views and ~103 pages and counting.  Almost entirely universally the comments are highly critical and damning of the recent decision.  They accuse SONOS of being arrogant and the announcement hastily announced, crude in nature and a slap in the face to those who have spent the most over the longest period and who have probably been the most evangelical about the brand for the longest time to friends and family. 

This loss of trust that very many now feel is precisely because most brand or ecosystem adopters don't (can’t) rush out and fill a house with devices; instead they build systems over many years as needs evolve and funds allow and when an announcement of this magnitude drops into the inbox of the most loyal customers then the consequence is the fury that was unleashed.  While SONOS did hint at this in their Annual Report (https://s22.q4cdn.com/672173472/files/doc_financials/2019/q4/52d86c5b-248f-4939-aa85-1489c1828e7f.pdf#page=17) and they spell out very many risk factors that the company faces; these are both external and internal to the company itself and some are as a result of being a relatively small and niche technology entity where the sector is changing rapidly and dominated by some extremely powerful competitors.  Many of these registered risks are probably familiar to business students through to company Directors however, a most relevant risk here it that: “We may choose to discontinue support for older versions of our products, resulting in customer dissatisfaction that could negatively affect our business and operating results.”  I wonder when the Board was signing off this Report whether they really understood the potential for this risk to bite and whether they have accurately modelled it for financial and reputational impact.  Only they know but, I imagine they have been completely blind-sided by the response.  The evidence is here: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.sonos.com, with 80% ‘Bad’ reviews out of 910 posted and a TrustScore of 1.3 out of 5.  This is just about as low as it’s possible to get since the lowest post is 1; secondly, that this community topic (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-support-clarifications-6835969) and the previously closed one (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-updates-for-legacy-products-6835470) are those with the biggest number of replies, by far.  Thirdly, their share price has taken a hit (down ~2%, https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/sono), but this will take some time to work through.  SONOS are expected to post revenue of between $1.365B and $1.4B, roughly 9.5% annual growth (https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/05/why-sonos-stock-climbed-128-in-december.aspx) though it will be interesting to know more when they announce their most recent financial results and host a Q&A (https://investors.sonos.com/news-and-events/investor-news/latest-news/2020/Sonos-Announces-Date-for-First-Quarter-2020-Financial-Results-and-Conference-Call/default.aspx).  Lastly, though the journalists are a bit ‘shruggy’ the rest of the web is not. A quick online search reveals all you need to know.

Sadly I think SONOS’ philosophy has been crumbling for quite a while.  Recent and not so recent updates that offer system improvements have often resulted in the opposite in my opinion.  Here are several examples:

1    Upcoming changes to ‘On this iPhone or iPad’ Playback (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/upcoming-changes-to-on-this-iphone-or-ipad-playback-6826585) is the third most replied to forum topic and describes the loss of a feature.

2    Updates to the Desktop Controller Coming Soon (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/updates-to-the-desktop-controller-coming-soon-6813300) is the fourth most replied to form topic and begins with a long-requested visual update, but most people preferred the blue version it seems.  Importantly though this ‘refresh’ removed:

• Setting up or transferring a system
• Adding a player to existing system
• The ability to bond/unbond players (surrounds, stereo pairs, or adding a Sub).
• Registering players
• TV setup for Beam, Playbase, and Playbar,
• Enabling parental controls
• Network settings and management
• Line-in settings
• Renaming a Room
• Opting in or out of a beta program
• Resetting your Sonos account password (you can still do so on a computer via sonos.com)

This turned out to be an attack on many fronts.  Importantly, it requires users to have up to date tablets or phones to do the management of the system, whereas it used to be possible to manage the entirety of the system with the desktop application and allowed older devices to still be used as everyday controllers.  SONOS’ decision here is decidedly anti-ethical and a non-sustainability practise and seemingly against their Responsibility pledge for wider Product Design and Supply Chain (https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/sustainability), but SONOS have never really opened up about this.  Importantly it also prevents users, or installers maintaining systems using Remote Desktop applications, which was nuts.

3    Android Devices no longer able to join SonosNet (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/android-devices-no-longer-able-to-join-sonosnet-6825471).  I asked SONOS help about this and their response was two-fold.  Firstly removing the feature, which was little used, apparently (though looking through support revealed a solid fan base) would free up device memory for other purposes.  Also, SONOS sort-of feared it might be related to electronic interference between the network and amplification circuitry.  These are my words but I did have a P5s replaced under warranty for issues around electronic interference, which SONOS said they could not replicate.  At the time it was a fantastic managed-AP though, well if you used Android.

The sad thing is that SONOS seemingly are very closed about their decision making any have never allowed user options.  The system is locked and updates irreversible.  Technically I don’t quite buy this since it is possible to reverse a beta upgrade, so it must be theoretically possible to wind the firmware back.  If I could, I’d probably like to revert to something around the 6.x or 7.x era and if I could fix the volume down ramp I would.

It’s not all doom and gloom as SONOS have introduced a few new features, most recently Amazon music HD though there is confusion about whether it really is HD if it’s called for by Alexa and the company are promising a fix.  Also, the loss then reinstatement of Audible, where the fix took quite a while to be sorted.  And this is the crux of issues into the future.  SONOS has been quite good about telling customers in advance when third party integrations will stop working and have a desire to maintain this, but if you have a legacy device in your system this will stop though when the third party company changes its protocols you will lose functionality and I imagine there won’t be a fix for this. 

Another driver for UK (and VPN) users could be related to the fact that the BBC is due to release a significant update for BBC SOUNDS in 2020 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/supported-devices/connected-tv) albeit for smart TVs.  It might just be the case that this also brings the on-demand features of BBC SOUNDS to SONOS and other aggregators and streamers, but presumably not if your system is legacy.  The on-demand content of BBC Radio, music and podcasts now through SOUNDS has been a perennial request to SONOS across many request forums.  By the way if you listen to BBC Radio on your SONOS then look at this: http://steveseear.org/high-quality-bbc-radio-streams/ for advice.  While there’s less meta-data available I find these streams more reliable than from the aggregators.  I used to use minimserver (https://minimserver.com/) to handle this, but now access the BBC streams directly.

Final issues: ~7W on ‘standby’ isn’t really acceptable anymore.  It might have been fine when lightbulbs were 60-100W but we can now light a house for the electrical cost of SONOS on standby, but this isn’t a rant!

So where does this leave us all?  SONOS are definitely in a flat spin about all this, or should be.  It’s highly unusual for the CEO to apologise about the way they handled a situation, but they are seemingly staying firm.  As mentioned above if I cannot group modern and legacy then all my system will remain legacy and I’ll probably ditch SONOS, which will be a pity.  A lot will depend on the situation between now and May and also what happens to the company and its customer relations and financial (sales) situation.  At worst I may keep some small areas of SONOS but expect something else to largely take over and the system to be relegated.  I bought into “The smart home sound system.” And SONOS’ “Our DNA – The connected home.” (https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/our-company)  This has to be one system, not two and trading up with a 30% discount when prices were recently raised makes me look the fool.  What this exactly means will depend on imagined future habits and where the software and hardware platforms go, plus what happens to various streaming services.  I don’t think it’ll be BOSE, more likely Yamaha for their integrated amp setup, plus standalone speakers, or something bespoke.  There world is moving very fast!  Will see…, but I will be extremely hesitant and cautious about recommending the SONOS platform to anyone in the future.  The brand has sadly lost my trust, but I understand that everyone is free to make their own decisions. 

Anyway, I hope this post might help you be better informed so you can make your choices.

Cheers, All and well done for reading this far.  Remember, it is only stuff!

Nailed it!

Unless Sonos reverses course and adopts this policy, I will never ever ever buy another Sonos product.

I will never ever ever recommend Sonos to another person.

And I will do everything in my power to discourage everyone I know from purchasing anything from Sonos.

I invite anyone who feels similarly betrayed to join me in doing the same.