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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user_end_of_lifed

Enthusiast II

Reply to The Epic Post (which I won’t quote!)

That is a very interesting post.
Reading that page about the history of Sonos just makes me sad. A decade or so ago they were truly pioneering and achieving great things in audio. Now what have they got? Nothing you can’t replicate with a £25 Echo Dot and software that would look identical to how it did 10 years ago if it wasn’t for all the stuff they’ve ripped out of it.
The bit I disagree with is the suggestion that a distributed architecture that they started with in 2003 buys them slack for this current decision.
The bottom line remains that these are general purpose computing devices with remotely updateable software - the architecture can be changed, but only if they care enough to do it.

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PeteD

Enthusiast I

It's good to know that there are so many people who understand multiroom audio better than its inventors and patent holders.

Oh of course I forgot. Sonos are being totally dishonest about this. Or is it just that they are stupid. I forget.

The reaction to my post is entirely what I expected.

John,

I don’t think anybody ever said they understood multiroom audio better than Sonos but I do believe we understand what they have said, and still say on their website:

https://www.sonos.com/en-ca/listen-your-way

Create your perfect sound system.

Everything works together, and Sonos works with all your favourite services so you can listen to what you want, where you want, how you want.

Customize your system

Start with one speaker and easily add more later. Stereo pair speakers in the same room for bolder, richer sound. Connect Sub to Playbar, Playbase, or Beam for deeper bass, then add a pair of rear surrounds for immersive surround sound. Hook up your turntable to Play:5 (doesn’t specify Gen 2) or Amp to stream vinyl all around your home.

Listen in any room

All Sonos speakers and components connect over WiFi so you can build the system you want. Put on a podcast in the bedroom while someone else watches TV in the living room, or group all your speakers to play music in sync.

You seem to want us to trust what Sonos is saying but I can’t reconcile the different positions they are simultaneously taking. Please tell me how their present above statements are still true in the mixed environment they are proposing? How will I be able to “easily add more later” and “group all your speakers” if I have even a single legacy component?

Hey there John B - the founder of SONOS (the one who built the company up to what it is) is no longer with the company. The new CEO behind this policy also (i) revised the privacy policy so if i didn’t agree to share my data my system would be bricked, and (ii) bricked the first SONOS controller that came out (and then settled a class action lawsuit that came from it). So, I would say SONOS’s current CEO doesn’t know jack s*** about what his customers want in multiroom audio. All he is trying to do is to turn a speaker system (some of which are physically built into a home) and turn it into a disposable product.

If SONOS wants to build “computers” then just build the computer part and allow me to plug whatever speaker I want into it.

Exactly. And it doesn’t matter how hard a few people try to tell us we bought into a computer system, most people who bought Sonos thought they were spending top bucks for a high quality, audiophile(ish) system that would last as long as every other audio component they owned (including NB getting software updates to maintain basic functionality!!) We never expected our turntables to be able to play CDs, but my 35 year old turntable still does the basic job I bought it for.

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kme123

Lyricist I

How to lose existing customers in one easy lesson well done Sonos, I will most certainly look at other products in the future my system is less than 3 years old and you tell me its obsolete. ££££££ of £ waisted

An ex customer

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kassey22000

Enthusiast II

Sonos speakers are not just speakers. They are essentially computers, and computers that need to constantly communicate with each other. Asking for a 25 year lifetime for a bit of traditional hifi equipment is reasonable. Asking for it from a multiroom wirelese audio system is stupidity and ignorance of the highest degree. And therefore consistent with much of the outrage on the ridiculous thread.

With all due respect John, While many of us long-time contributors to this forum know that your are a long-time avid Sonos supporter to the nth degree, to state that this is a “ridiculous thread” shows that you yourself are horribly biased. These posts are from real people who invested thousands of hard-earned dollars (and lots of time) in real whole-home-audio solutions to play music and audio, sold by high-end audio retailers. To just write them off as whiners who should have had all the technical foresight to ignore Sonos’s push for audio (not computers) in their extensive marketing and sales campaigns is unkind at best. Sonos stands for SOUND not personal computers. The arguments are valid and real in these posts and let them be.

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Danos1

Trending Lyricist I

Can someone whose been around here for a while compare this to when Sonos EOL their controllers? Sounded like they pissed off a lot of loyal customers when they did that, but just rode it out and the newer customers don’t even know what happened. Is that what’s going to happen here?

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ian987

Lyricist II

It's good to know that there are so many people who understand multiroom audio better than its inventors and patent holders.

Oh of course I forgot. Sonos are being totally dishonest about this. Or is it just that they are stupid. I forget.

The reaction to my post is entirely what I expected.

There is some question as to whether Sonos did invent multi room audio, and if the patent is valid. Sonos are in the process of suing Lenbrook (owners of the Bluesound brand) for patent infringement. As part of their defence, Lenbrook are showing that multiroom synchronisation was demonstrated in the Barix Extreamer product in 2002/3, attended on at least one occasion by a Sonos representative. There’s quite a good summary of the case as of October here - https://www.strata-gee.com/giving-no-ground-lenbrook-launches-robust-retaliation-to-sonos-lawsuit/

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andy_120

Enthusiast II

Can someone whose been around here for a while compare this to when Sonos EOL their controllers? Sounded like they pissed off a lot of loyal customers when they did that, but just rode it out and the newer customers don’t even know what happened. Is that what’s going to happen here?

I have always felt there were two reasons the sonos controller was EOL particularly the cr200. I had 4 of these each one was replaced 3 times so in all I went brought 16 of them. All had the same issue the dead screen issue this resulted in dead areas on the touch screen. This really occurred in the early days of smart phones and I guess sonos took the decision to scrap the controller and let users use there tablets and smart phones. Eventually sonos agreed to take back my controllers as I wasn't prepared anymore for a Hesse screen fails. But this is very identical to the current situation where features on the cr200 where removed as updates went on. But sonos are not prepared to do the same for legacy productions where new features would not be added.

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IronMikeLB

Lyricist II

Too many users are finding this response to be inadequate, Sonos is trying to move on, but thousands and thousands of customers don’t trust the brand… if your one of them, sign the petition on Change.org.

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HelterSkelter

Enthusiast II

Sonos speakers are not just speakers. They are essentially computers, and computers that need to constantly communicate with each other.

That’s a thing that computers all do, John. For reference please see the Internet.

Asking for a 25 year lifetime for a bit of traditional hifi equipment is reasonable. Asking for it from a multiroom wirelese audio system is stupidity and ignorance of the highest degree.

Ok, explain why. Produce one logical argument why a play 5 is going to lose the ability to be grouped with a play 1, especially given that Sonos control the protocol in use.

Well, they will be able to if they stay on tbe same software. And we don't know for sure what the final outcome will be on legacy vs modern. But let's assume it won't be possible.

Sonos is an integrated system that has always relied on common software. Geouped speakers need to be able to perform identical tasks. Either speaker has to be able to act as 'group co-ordinator', running the show for the group.

Now, I find it entirely plausible that the more the system has to do, the more likely it is that a player with a paltry 32MB of memory cannot keep up. That seems far more likely than the cynical view on here that Sonos are making all this up and are just profiteering. You are free to believe otherwise.

I don't think the majority of Sonos users want the system to do anything ‘more’, they just want it to play music like it did when we invested, so, your theory is not relevant.

I suspect you are being a Troll.

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IJN

Renowned Enthusiast I

Someone, in Sonos, please send an update of what approaches are being taken/ explored.

We may accept that ultimately some initiatives will not bear fruit, but it would certainly take some of the heat out of here if we knew what is, is possibly and is definitely not being explored. Three or four months of speculation will bring Sonos and users down.

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