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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chickentender

And so it begins

retailers-move-to-dump-sonos

Sounds like Sonos is indeed under pressure - and combined with having an unhealthy tone towards their partners and a technological base that is not modern, they have now begun doing such absurd things like we have seen recently. Certainly a sign of desperation from a company that doesn’t know what to do.

No disrespect, but what the hell is “Channel News”? To be very frank, that was one of the most poorly written and worded pieces I’ve read on the web in a bit… and one has to be forgiving of web pieces. I’ve seen posts here in the forum put together better (not mine, mind you, but they’re here :relaxed: ). Just had a strange air to it as well.

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I

IJN

Renowned Enthusiast I

No doubt you’ve all received the email from Spencer - says nothing more than his first and last statement previously discussed on here. No doubt it’s been sent to all customers not just those contributing here.

Howver many valid points have been raised by the community which are worthy of comment if only to confirm or otherwise that they are working on various attributes or not. There would even be comfort if they said they couldn’t be sure that there is a solution to continue with all house grouping across legacy and modern units.

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Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

Maybe they lack the ability to develop the software? It's not impossible but maybe they just can't do it reliably and decided to segment for stability?

The hardware has always been solid however I've had Sonos for about 3 years and it feels like I've been on a beta release the whole time. I suspect they are rushing things to market to complete with bigger brands.

It isn’t just “develop the software,” that part is simple, the hard part is “fit it in 32 MB of memory” which is why Sonos has had to drop features to add new ones and had to skip adding ones they would really like to have added.

Sadly the hardware, while being solid, wasn’t designed for the way the music industry changed. Sonos realized this fairly early on and added memory to the products to reduce the bottleneck for the newer stuff.

That leaves us where we are today with the oldest Sonos tapped out on resources and holding back a lot of stuff folks want. I’s say Sonos could have gone at this in a far better way but it had to happen at some point or it would be the end of new features and fixes for problems that just won’t fit in the 32 MB.

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chickentender

It is unclear to me why it is necessary to insist that the SonosNet would have to be split or legacy systems and newer systems can't coexist together. I am a software developer, so my background is primarily software, not hardware, but taking a page out of something I've seen Azure do, why not have each device have a list of capabilities that it supports? Then, each feature that is supported has capabilities that it requires. It is simply then a matter of matching capabilities when a feature is executed.

Presumably you already have that to some extent, e.g. a Port can be an input or an output or both, whereas a Play has no inputs.

But for the underlying issue here, it’s overkill. What’s needed is a reduced “Legacy” firmware that just supports getting music from other more-current devices in the network, and playing that music. Not every device needs to be able to connect to Spotify, as long as something on the network can.

In fact, that’s how the system already works. If you have a group of three speakers playing music from Spotify (just as an example), they aren’t making three separate connections to Spotify to get the music. One device is downloading, the others are just playing. The Legacy firmware just needs to assert that it will always be the follower and never handle the connection to the internet. No need to split the network at all, because with the reduced functionality requirements, the Legacy firmware will fit in the available memory of these devices. How do I know? Because it doesn’t require the devices to do anything they don’t do already.

Agreed. I think we have seen something similar with Airplay 2 compatibility. I recently purchased a Beam, which is the only Airplay 2 compatible speaker in my setup, yet by grouping can now play music from my iPhone across my home. Only 1 speaker, the Beam is doing the Airplay 2 connection however.

Maybe they lack the ability to develop the software? It's not impossible but maybe they just can't do it reliably and decided to segment for stability?

The hardware has always been solid however I've had Sonos for about 3 years and it feels like I've been on a beta release the whole time. I suspect they are rushing things to market to complete with bigger brands.

I’ve been on Sonos for 6 (7?) years, and I know precisely the divide… e.g. roughly 3 years ago (a bit less) is when voice integration began and the controller updates began taking drastic turns from this historically awesome versions. I mention this to contrast the past couple years with those earlier ones (for me personally). I bought a Play:1 in 2014 on a whim. No one told me to, I’d read a bit about them and seen the adverts a small amount but mostly I just wanted to check it out because it seemed different.
And. It. Was. To-date it’s still an experience I remember. It the *very* first time (and I’ve had a technical background in hardware/software for 2 decades) I’d tried out a product and the software/hardware combination just worked. It setup easily. Navigation and playback was seamless. The range was amazing. The integrations were amazing. I immediately bought another Play:1 and a Connect for my main audio system and didn’t look back. Those first 3 or 4 years were fantastic…. then some hiccups as things began to change. And change again. And software problems. And controller redesigns. And voice integration that was more like alpha than beta. And now the entire line took a different direction away from true audio, and now…. here we are.

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chickentender

It isn’t just “develop the software,” that part is simple, the hard part is “fit it in 32 MB of memory” which is why Sonos has had to drop features to add new ones and had to skip adding ones they would really like to have added.

Sadly the hardware, while being solid, wasn’t designed for the way the music industry changed. Sonos realized this fairly early on and added memory to the products to reduce the bottleneck for the newer stuff.

That leaves us where we are today with the oldest Sonos tapped out on resources and holding back a lot of stuff folks want. I’s say Sonos could have gone at this in a far better way but it had to happen at some point or it would be the end of new features and fixes for problems that just won’t fit in the 32 MB.

Indeed…. a way of true audio, not consumer convenience electronics. In my opinion they chose the wrong market to try to be competitive in and have abandoned, little by little, the one in which they could have excelled.

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R

Red69Baron

Lyricist I

Dear Sonos,

I purchased my first Sonos when you were a fledgeling Company buying into your vision at that time of a modern way to play music and invested heavily >£1,500 to get multi-room music system and to also incorporate my music system into your modern system with a bridge etc. I invested in several hand controllers each over £200 which over the course of time they first broke down with terrible screen problems and then the software stopped supporting the unit so it became the first legacy your produced. The writing was already on the wall and I should have realised then that my loyalty and hard-earned cash to support this company was going to end in tears and this company had become too big to care any longer on its loyal, faithful early hardcore investors that made this company.

More than 5 years on and now you are going to destroy my system by calling half of it legacy without updates to support. Remember I have already seen it with the various controllers going in the early days so a written email after the event does not fill me up with confidence as it was obviously a knee jerk reaction to thousands of very unhappy “investors” in this company.

I have not purchased a Sonos device for several years based on this event coming to reality and now it will take a great deal of convincing to believe in this company again and ever purchase/upgrade and spend my hard-earned cash. I have lived through the hard times in the early stages of bug fixes technical break downs but always until yesterday believe and supported and championed the system to my family, friends and colleagues convincing many to also go down this route. But that loyalty has been broken and will now take exceptional skills and offers to convince me that it is still worth investing in these products for the future and not having to face another huge legacy bill every 5 years or so.

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C

Cisume

Enthusiast II

Maybe they lack the ability to develop the software? It's not impossible but maybe they just can't do it reliably and decided to segment for stability?

The hardware has always been solid however I've had Sonos for about 3 years and it feels like I've been on a beta release the whole time. I suspect they are rushing things to market to complete with bigger brands.

It isn’t just “develop the software,” that part is simple, the hard part is “fit it in 32 MB of memory” which is why Sonos has had to drop features to add new ones and had to skip adding ones they would really like to have added.

Sadly the hardware, while being solid, wasn’t designed for the way the music industry changed. Sonos realized this fairly early on and added memory to the products to reduce the bottleneck for the newer stuff.

That leaves us where we are today with the oldest Sonos tapped out on resources and holding back a lot of stuff folks want. I’s say Sonos could have gone at this in a far better way but it had to happen at some point or it would be the end of new features and fixes for problems that just won’t fit in the 32 MB.

This sounds like an excuse.

nothing has changed the way you play sound files or streams.

Maybe part of the future heavy lifting shouldn’t be on a playing device in the first place because earlier or later you going to run into the same issues. If you keep it on the devices you produce expensive throwaway gadgets with a very limited lifetime. Might be time to restructure how the software is working. But the way it looks the new model seems to be planned obsolescence to sell more units. For a single device this might be OK. If you have your house outfitted with multiple devices I would assume there is a local server in play one way or another with all the computing power you need. From multi room audio to throwaway gadgets … :wink:

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Whitenoise

Enthusiast I

us.audiopro.com/

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A

Alix68

Contributor I

Sonos, this is unacceptable. You lost me as a customer and my trust in your products. You would obviously do this again in the future. Sonos great idea badly executed.

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J

JW_1

Lyricist II

SONOS, you are a bunch of greedy stupid pr**ks.
I have spent some $3600AU, plus on my recommendation, 3 other family members have spent similar amounts and we ALL own your so called legacy models. Thanks for shafting us all.

What do I expect moving forward? Personally I expect you to continue to support my hardware and software into the future (that means at least 10years from now). I expect either a separate app for my 100% legacy system or an app that can allow me to select what features function or not; airplay 2 for example that meant I had to stop screen mirroring on Apple TV if I wanted to continue to use lock screen functionality on my iPhone.
But most of all I simply want the system I bought to continue to function as it did when I bought it, nothing more, nothing less.
What you do next will determine if I ever purchase another SONOS product in the future. But rest assured, I will be keeping my recommendations to myself from this point forward. You have crapped in your nest and lost the support of a huge percentage of your existing customers.
Really stupid move guys.

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