Retired Sonos Staff

End of Software Support - Clarifications

December 8, 2022 at 11:29 AM
4256 replies
269665 views

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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andy_120

Enthusiast II

This is far more reaching than just sonos, let’s say Spotify change something in there streaming api if that happens and I can’t stream via sonos Spotify will be cancelled aswell, this applies to all streaming services

T

Toppage

Lyricist I

Well this is all becoming a marvellous business school case study on how to cock things up spectacularly. Slow hand clap.

C

ChrisL450

Lyricist I

This is very depressing news. I have 3 connects and a play 5 that are deemed obsolete, as well as some newer units. Like many folk on here, I was a fairly early adopter and have been very satisfied with the overall sonos experience, bar a few glitches in the early days. The fact that sonos appears not to support different firmware versions across it’s product offerings seems very short-sighted and demonstrates poor strategic systems architectural decision making.

I am not going to rush out and upgrade any of my components, even with a 30% discount teaser, for no discernible (to me) improvement. I bought my first units back in 2012 and still use the same functionality as I did back then; connectivity to my NAS music server and the tune-in radio service. I don’t need or want voice activation, paid-for streaming services, etc. If and when my current set-up stops working, I won’t be buying SONOS again, only to face the same issue at some point in the future. I have other audiophile components that I’ve had for 20+ years that stiil work and sound awesome.

Come on SONOS, you can do much better than this!

J

JonA33

Lyricist I

I spent somewhere between £5,000 and £6,000 on Sonos products back in 2015, including a Play:5 (first Gen). Now barely 5 years later it becomes startlingly clear this is not going to be the long-term investment I hoped.

I won’t be spending a penny more after this disgraceful announcement. A company that decides to try and extort money out of its existing, loyal customer base rather than go after new customers is a dying company. Sonos can no longer be trusted. Perhaps if you had invested more time and effort in true innovation in recent times rather than a string of lacklustre revisions you would not be in this predicament, but instead we the customers are asked to pay for your mistakes.

That’s not something I’m prepared to do. As and when you declare the remainder of my 14 five-year-old Sonos products to be “legacy”, I will be replacing them with a different brand. I know I won’t be alone.

User811083

Trending Lyricist I

Bluesound is starting to look very good right now.

Chris Blackwell

A

AdrianB100

Lyricist II

I invested heavily in Sonos, 3 Connect Amps, Play 5, Playbar etc etc and now I am being told that most of what I have is obsolete. I bough my last connect amp 2 years ago…. it cost a ridiculous amount of money and it’s obsolete.

If Sonos don’t reverse this decision, I will never buy a Sonos device again.

Whoever made this decision is quite frankly stupid. The share price is down 1% today, and when people understand the re-percussions of destroying brand value, it will fall much much further.

Sonos Executives, ever heard of New Coke…. well you are about to re-live that kind of mistake. Sonos is not that much different to Apple, it relies on customers brand loyalty. I have encouraged lots of people to buy Sonos over the years. I will never do so again.

Bad Move Sonos….. Fix it and Fix it quick ! Or like most of your customers, we will just boycott Sonos and go elsewhere

S

Smeicy

Contributor I

You probably HAD the most loyal customer base in home-electronic equipment. Customers who assisted in spreading the word and convinced non-tech friends and family to jump into streaming.

And then you f… it all up by pulling the legs of all your oldest customers by asking them to throw well-functioning equipment out and invest in new, with the same basic functionality - stream music.

Is this a result of an internal brainstorming exercise or did external consultants deliver scenarios showcasing the huge revenue this marketing stunt (in theory) would create?

You guys lost a brand today, and it will take years to win it back… if ever.

K

K2K

Lyricist II

The level of pain scales with the degree ownership. I don’t care hearing that there is no room left in Legacy devices for future fixes. Apparently there was room to add registration, and usage metrics, and more. If you have not seen Your Data Collected have a look here. None of that was there when I purchased those Legacy devices and I never wanted any of it. Sonos has seen fit to change the functionally of my purchased hardware as they please. Remove all the garbage code you’ve added to these devices and open up some space to leave room for fixes for another 5 years. Give us a runway longer than June and stop raising prices and we might stick around.

Long Live AirPlay 2 - it may be my path out of this mess.

I’m with googull on this one. And wow - People should take a look at the analytics in their profile. Thanks Sonos for tracking my data in ways that In no way assist support and are useless to me, but tailored to be sold to streaming providers.

S

Sonotsonos

Lyricist I

What a ridiculous way to kill a business!

Technically there is no reason why different components in any “system” cannot be upgraded separately. Each component has a unique identifier which the software downloaded can use to condition the specific update for that component.
It’s bad enough that Sonos try to extort money out of their customers but to imagine they are ignorant of systems design just adds insult to injury.

My only involvement with Sonos in future will be to try and explain to as many people as possible what a bunch of cowboys they are!

Disgusting.

P

PBobUK

Trending Lyricist I

I’ve done all my ranting and believe they are set in their ways and will not change so…

My personal solution:

I’ve now decided to build a new Wi-Fi network that will not be connected to the internet.

Local network files such as mp3 and FLAC (as long as not 24bit) will continue to play OK.

Plugged into my 4 year old ’Legacy’ Sonos Connect (which sounds amazing btw through a Benchmark DAC, Naim 42.5/110 and AE1’s)

A new PC with digital output could achieve Internet radio and Spotify (whatever floats your boat) being accessed by a Remote Desktop client on my phone. A bit more clunky than the Sonos App but wouldn’t change every week.

Most importantly, would be cheaper and last longer than 5 years (now known as Sonos years).

I’d love some ideas on how to improve this concept if anyone has any.

I’ll start with just a 2nd SSID on a separate network but may have to have a 3rd VLAN.

You used to be so good Sonos, what happened?

Similar approach could be taken using an AV receiver - connect to a line in on a 5, or optical on a play bar/base, then connect an internet enabled device to the AV receiver to stream content. Less than ideal, but a way to protect the hardware from forced bricking.

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