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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gbr100k

Lyricist I

I’m new to Sonos, I really like the products. I was planing a house full to add to the three I have. I appreciate your honesty in pointing out the vunerability of modern electronics, but I have stopped buying music and rely on streaming to supply all my music needs. I need to know that your sound system will continue to work until I want to replace it. I dont want to find one day that my whole system no longer plays my music source because of some minor software tweek. Your brand confidence relys on all your equipment flawlessly working together which historically it has. But now? You need to ensure that backwards compatability is maintained and assured, I will need some serious reasurance before I buy another Sonos product. I cannot imagine buying a whole system that the manufacturer may through disinterest render obsolete.

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Alan in Bayern

Lyricist I

Ryan,

On opening up the Sonos ‘Important Notice’ - posted 21. Jan - my first reaction was anger. I’ve spent a few thousand €’s building a sound system which I absolutely love - and which suits my needs. Was it Sales Dept. or Streaming companies pressure behind this?? How could a company like Sonos literary shoot themselves in the foot like this and destroy their great reputation.

Having now read Patrick Spence’s apology and other posts where other Sonos users give their heated opinions I think Sonos really needs to reflect on how they can provide long term software support to our so called legacy products.

I look forward to hearing from you as to how Sonos will deliver long term software support!

One final point. You could do with updating the Sonos ‘Important Notice’ as posted 21. Jan to reflect the Patrick Spence’s apology.

Viele Grüße

Alan in Bayern

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macallan18

Enthusiast I

I genuinely wonder how much it would have cost Sonos to develop a Media/ Legacy hub (which I'm sure people would buy in droves) vs what this last week will have cost them in lost sales and share prices.

Why would you employ the man that killed Blackberry to run your company, doesn't make any sense. My 8 year old daughter could do a better job it seems..

agreed, or they could simply add the functionality to the newer speakers. no one really cares about voice control or bluetooth, these are the ideas of a brain dead leadership. personally all i want is higher quality formats, and if the legacy speakers cant handle flac or other hd audio(a known limitation, and known when i bought them), how about streaming 256 or the maximum bit rate to legacy speakers with the HD going to the newer?

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macallan18

Enthusiast I

Ryan,

On opening up the Sonos ‘Important Notice’ - posted 21. Jan - my first reaction was anger. I’ve spent a few thousand €’s building a sound system which I absolutely love - and which suits my needs. Was it Sales Dept. or Streaming companies pressure behind this?? How could a company like Sonos literary shoot themselves in the foot like this and destroy their great reputation.

Having now read Patrick Spence’s apology and other posts where other Sonos users give their heated opinions I think Sonos really needs to reflect on how they can provide long term software support to our so called legacy products.

I look forward to hearing from you as to how Sonos will deliver long term software support!

One final point. You could do with updating the Sonos ‘Important Notice’ as posted 21. Jan to reflect the Patrick Spence’s apology.

Viele Grüße

Alan in Bayern

keep in mind his apology changes nothing about the original announcement. he literally said “we are sorry, we made a mistake, we are still doing everythig we said, please bear with us”.

what kept me from denon heos, audio pro, that blue whatever company and all the others that offered higher quality audio was sonos long standing support of legacy products and fanatical supporters. now both are dead.

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John B

I genuinely wonder how much it would have cost Sonos to develop a Media/ Legacy hub (which I'm sure people would buy in droves) vs what this last week will have cost them in lost sales and share prices.

Why would you employ the man that killed Blackberry to run your company, doesn't make any sense. My 8 year old daughter could do a better job it seems..

agreed, or they could simply add the functionality to the newer speakers. no one really cares about voice control or bluetooth, these are the ideas of a brain dead leadership. personally all i want is higher quality formats, and if the legacy speakers cant handle flac or other hd audio(a known limitation, and known when i bought them), how about streaming 256 or the maximum bit rate to legacy speakers with the HD going to the newer?

All Sonos products can handle FLAC. None do hires because Sonos don’t believe it makes an audible difference. This is completely irrelevant to legacy vs modern. And the fact that you aren’t interested in voice control doesn’t mean nobody is. If there is a threat to Sonos it is Google and Amazon. Far more so than even the fury demonstrated on this thread.

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screechingcow

Lyricist I

I am in a holding pattern until May. I will spend my time looking at an alternative systems.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/so-long-sonos-meet-the-open-source-audio-system-that-will-never-die/

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Saxakola

Lyricist III

It's kind of absurd that Sonos, who brought us a device to hook up our old speakers, can't do the same for their own...

Bingo. This is where Spence lost the plot.

The solution was/is staring at him in the face and he dropped the ball.

Every issue, every complaint, every pissed off poster and loyal customer boils down to this one simple solution.

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John B

It's kind of absurd that Sonos, who brought us a device to hook up our old speakers, can't do the same for their own...

Bingo. This is where Spence lost the plot.

The solution was/is staring at him in the face and he dropped the ball.

Every issue, every complaint, every pissed off poster and loyal customer boils down to this one simple solution.

Ah the confidence that total ignorance of even a single line of the Sonos system code can bring!

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Michael Mantkowski

Enthusiast I

What I don’t understand is why SONOS does not create a middleman box that can exist between the older network and whatever they want to change to. Lets assume you want to move onto a more modern network technology. The “Legacy Bridge” or what ever you want to call it could pass along all streaming needs to the old network items and provide all the new features to the older products. At the end of the day they are speakers. Today they have to be able to do everything that the newer products do because you may want to stream a different channel on every speaker/connect/whatever. But if the heavy lifting was done by a dedicated device then it could relieve the older units from that duty and let them play nicely with the new. As others haves said, there are 20 year old 10 megabit network devices that still happily connect to our new gigabit networks.

I would pay for this. I would then be able to happily add and replace with new equipment without issue anytime I need or want. And I would not be throwing perfectly good working equipment into the landfill.

It seems really simple to me. If there is a reason this cannot be done then tell us. Otherwise we simply are left to our own conclusions that you simply want to make more money by forcing the older systems out and their users to repurchase.

Lastly, your stated purpose is to allow for all these new features. What are these new things? I can’t imagine that voice control even plays into this. I can already do it today on my whole SONOS system young and old via a single Alexa device (Not that I do very often as it easier to use the Controller App in my opinion.). All that Alexa does is translate our voice commands into something the receiving system understands. Its not like every speaker needs to have Alexa/Google/Whatever on board. Maybe some of us would be more accepting if we knew what the goals here really are. That’s still a big “maybe” since we all seem to believe that are solutions that are not being worked on.

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Andy_sw17

Lyricist II

Agree with all the complaints. What numbskull decided to treat customers this way?

30% discount is NOT anywhere near enough for expensive products to persuade us all to trade up.

In one room I have 2 Connect:Amps - only one of which is eligible for the trade in despite being a similar age, which leaves me to either cough up 70% for one Amp and 100% for another Amp or risk them not working together properly/fully as a grouped pair in future.

And then, I have a Connect in another room… driving a separate (non Sonos) amp to replace.

The only way out of this for Sonos which sees their brand survive is to increase the discount so the replacements are at cost price (so I guess a discount more like 65%) and accept ALL items if, like me, you have them paired up to work together. Otherwise, like others, I will switch to other, cheaper brands having learned the lesson.

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