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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Nikisixx21

Enthusiast I

My question continues to be what is Sonos going to do for their customers who were deceptively sold old stock which in turn had as little as a 4 year fully functional lifespan?

if Sonos was making under the radar hardware changes to connect amps but not publicizing what changed or how to spot the old ones (now legacy aka garbage to the rest of my 15k dollar whole home system) they should have been removed from the sales channel.

I have 4 connect amps purchased new less than 5 years ago and 3 are current and 1 is legacy.

that is very deceptive and clearly less than their new commitment to 5 year update life span.

What a scam

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IJN

Renowned Enthusiast I

Since this announcement a few days ago the share price has dropped 6.5%.

Thats a billion dollars wiped off the company value. A fair few “trade ups” would need to be sold to recover that.

Hows about just going back to plan A and not treating your existing customer base like a cash cow adn expecting them to just suck it up that their home sound system which has been added to over the years is about to get ripped apart.

Good thing Nicholas Millington, Chief Product Officer, sold 30% of his shares on January 2nd for $500,000.00 before the share price started going down. Shrewd trader that Nicholas :wink: .

http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001314727/5e4c0a01-abfa-4ea8-bf30-6a97f31fb24d.pdf

It’s probably already been asked, but isn’t that type of activity illegal? Knowing sh1t is about to happen and offloading your stock before the market knows??

Yes, it very much is. If you are aware of information that is likely to have a significant impact on share price, and act upon that information before it is made public, it is insider trading. Which is certainly illegal.

Sonos IPO didn’t crater , but …

The $2 billion valuation is far short of the $2.5 to $3 billion valuation that analysts expected before the IPO.

The tempered enthusiasm is based on fears that Sonos will struggle to compete as a single device manufacturer.

But stock market values are not only determined by the separation of Sonos units into modern and legacy categories - think world economic outlooks; US/ China tariffs; competitor actions; failure to meet pre IPO forecasts for a whole host of reasons…

But, the share price has taken a sizeable knock in the last couple of days but not to the degree implied above..

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rwrgeo

Renowned Enthusiast II

Still really disappointed with this mess.

It has occurred to me that provided they were willing to provide basic maintenance to keep the existing app functionality essentially as it is now (which they may have now conceded, it’s not terribly clear) they could have achieved almost the same outcome by just announcing the exciting ‘Sonos 2.0’, ‘New Sonos’ or whatever which will now be the main focus of future developments saying only newer devices were eligible/capable to move to it and if you have a mixed system you can split or stay as you are now. No-one loses (I mean half the time people curse the app updates and changes), some people gain, maybe people aspire to have the newer system and replace some of their kit.

That does assume its possible to keep the ‘legacy’ devices going - there have been examples recently of not-that-old smart Samsung tvs losing Netflix apparently for technical reasons despite them previously handling it fine, although there a cheap chromecast or similar is a fairly easy fix.

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spunkworks

Lyricist III

Retailers in the Netherlands are now dumping Sonos for a 21% discount, makes the 30% trade-up an even bigger joke.

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andy_120

Enthusiast II

Yamaha musicast looking very good as a replacement, so if I lose streaming on the sonos I'll get the Yamaha and use the sonos as a dumb speaker system.

Why Yamaha? Trying to see why that seems to be the pick by most here.

Simple really the Yamaha will add into the sonos system and once the sonos stops working completely or I bin it the Yamaha will take the sonos place. But one thing I know for sure I will never commit to any system as I did with sonos. This has taught me that we are at the whims of the manufacturers.

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HelterSkelter

Enthusiast II

It seems telling that Ryan_S has not made a comment or clarification in many, many pages of posts.

Either we’re all being allowed to vent, or there’s nothing new to say. Or both.

I’m reading along, but there hasn’t been much in need of clarification that hasn’t already been said.

And everyone is definitely allowed to vent. As long as the community rules are followed (for example no personal attacks and keeping profanity out of your posts) we welcome the feedback. I’m also making sure to share your voice with the right people.

Good to know you are listening along Ryan, and passing information to the relevant parties.

Could I ask you to pass on information to the advertising department that current UK advertising states ‘Build a system’.

Then goes onto say ‘expand it any time’, and ‘easily connect speakers in different rooms …. brings every room together’

This is incorrect, it needs to state (from May?) that you cannot expand the system if you have any legacy equipment in the network, and that if you do so, you’ll not be expanding the system as such but creating two separate systems (and hence cannot bring every room together).

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Cisume

Enthusiast II

Hi all employees and the CEO at SONOS, the past days has been turmoilf us and for you, CEO has halfway withdrawn the statement made earlier in the week and I have felt resentment to SONOS, totally losing trust in you.

What SONOS must do in order to earn back the trust is to prove words with rock solid actions and promises, not a single vague reservation will be accepted by your customers anymore, your wording will be analyzed and interpreted by us all.

All of us have and still enjoy your products, you thought that you could make us accept the first message and you have with your anlysis late 2019 shown that such statements would damage your brand and still you went along instead of finding an better option. This falls on all the management and employees that has been involved in this mess.

I’am looking into my options and currently I have no intention of expanding my current SONOS stable with further products from you, until you prove to me that you deserve to get my money again.

So prove yourself to me and the other customers with real promises and actions, you probably need to show the roadmap for us in this matter (and for your competition) in order to acheive this.

You have envisioned yourself as a premium brand-being one of the more expensive solutions, that leads the market, continue to behave as such and in this you need to consider that your speakers are speakers not computers, your tech platform must always be ocmpliant to that so your customers continue to buy your products.

If you choose a tech platform solution that is inferior from cost perspective ( I mean 4 GB of memory wasn’t unobtainable when you started building your units-costwise, lessons of memory need has bee around since the 90s), then you need to have another track for upgrading that tech platform than you have today.

Do anything else and I can promise you failure

I have a feeling the entire company is in turmoil. I was working with some great support folks over the last 2 weeks to nail down some Sonosnet issues and now I can’t get anyone to respond. The engineer/hi-tier folks are booked out over a week now and I don’t dare contact their offshore-contracted support. Maybe they are all at an emergency offsite meeting trying to right the ship. Hope they do because like so many, I invested not only a lot of money but a lot of personal time over the years building out my Whole-Home-Audio system and while I absolutely hate this management debacle I want my system to continue to work TOGETHER, not split!

It looks when the new leadership moved in they didn’t pay attention at the briefing about their customers and community.

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jwinther

Lyricist III

Yamaha musicast looking very good as a replacement, so if I lose streaming on the sonos I'll get the Yamaha and use the sonos as a dumb speaker system.

Why Yamaha? Trying to see why that seems to be the pick by most here.

I tried it out (got the first device today) because it was same price as the trade-in price at Sonos to get a Port but with more features, more connections, etc., and as far as I could see, a reasonable sized user base. The latter should be some kind of security for this system to keep existing for a while, I thought.

After ordering this, I learned about other potentially interesting systems - especially Teufel looks both low-price and reasonably feature-rich, and Primare Prisma looks like a potentially high quality product (even though I haven’t seen or listened to it, so it may be an illusion).

As for the Yamaha, my first impression is that the device (a WXC-50 - pre-amp/streamer) is quite solidly built and not fully as ugly as I had expected - the LEDs on the front can even be switched off, making it look more discrete. Plugged it to the amp (an old mid-range Sony, originally bought with my Sonos ZP90) quickly and easily using the cables from the ZP90 for power, network, and signal (COAX digital). Setup through the mobile app - super easy, it magically by itself configured network, connected to the app and everything else, just by pushing one button.

Sound quality was not nice until I found a setting for “Bass Extension”. The amp does have a quite thin sound profile and needs the extra bass in its input, so other amps may not need this flag set.

Internet radio worked out of the box but I had problems with my NAS (an old one from LG) - making sure that DLNA settings were correct, suddenly it started working, and for a while I could then listen to one song at a time, then it stopped, then I had to pick a different album, again one song, etc. - probably due to it being busy indexing (didn’t say that it was but was flashing the screen irregularly and jumping away from my selections all the time). Currently, after an hour or so, the album/artist list is a big mess and there are wrong titles in the queue - playing mostly what I select but shows something else!

Should mention that it plays files from the smartphone without problems - quality is perfect and finding and selecting the files is simple and pleasant.

The device has an http server built-in, so it can be used directly from the browser - settings and selection of what to play. The interface, however, is primitive and not at all modern. The Android mobile app looks better, even though it has an unusual flow (but not necessarily bad). Nothing of this reaches the standard of Sonos apps.

As for now, I like the sound quality but not the user interface. I have not yet had the chance to try anything multiroom, and neither the many connection types supported, including bluetooth.

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“This is a chance now to come up with a system that doesn’t cause massive planetary damage in exchange for disposable stuff,” Proctor said. (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3a8dpn/sonos-makes-it-clear-you-no-longer-own-the-things-you-buy)

IJN

Renowned Enthusiast I

Retailers in the Netherlands are now dumping Sonos for a 21% discount, makes the 30% trade-up an even bigger joke.

Don’t see the joke…

Take an imaginary Sonos unit retailing at £100 (if only!)

With the Trade Up Sonos offer , this would cost £70.

Assuming the retailer offering the discount is also participating in the Sonos Trade-In Scheme, the net price taking account of the Sonos Trade-in and the retailer’s discount is £55.30. Appreciate not all retailers will be participating with Sonos Trade In.

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Telekev

Lyricist I

Dear Sonos Community & Company,

I just wanted to pitch in, being a Sonos product user since 2012, I am a bit dismayed about Sonos’ announcement. It certainly does not encourage me to invest in Sonos in the future, no matter how this matter is resolved. I am a Connect user only so my hifi plays on regardless, if I had a Sonos speaker I would be, frankly, f furious. I don’t know if there is a halfway measure here to pay for product updates for example.

I think the bad press generated by this event is potentially the beginning of the end for Sonons so I don’t see a happy ending for anyone here. Hopefully I am wrong (usually!). Simply put, when alternative, good quality, hifi equipment can be purchased for the same price as a Sonos speaker, invest wisely and do not be held to ransom. Spread the news.

Kevin

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The $2 billion valuation is far short of the $2.5 to $3 billion valuation that analysts expected before the IPO.

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