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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laudi

Lyricist III

Anyone seen the original Muppet Movie lately?

Well, my kid and I did with three Play 5 1st gens and the Sub, the front Play5 1st gen line in from TV, with Sub and rear Play5 1st gen R/L stereo tuned via set up app.

BRICKING!!! BRICKING!!! BRICKING!!!

ANIMAL!!! ANIMAL!!! ANIMAL!!!

Someday we’ll find it, the Rainbow Connection. The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

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xnigelx

Enthusiast I

I've been with Sonos a very long time. I just bought two new Ones for my kids rooms. I have 6 zones in a small 1700sqft house. And now 80% of my perfectly working system is obsolete.

30% is an absolute joke. It's literally employee discount for any vendor that sells your product.

I'd be willing to pay 30% to send you my perfectly working system for a new product.

You say hardware limitations.. Why not allow us to choose what services we NEED in our system to reduce the size required? I for one use radio, Pandora, Amazon music only. I could care less about the 50 other services you might provide. Have your software build out a custom "kernel" tailored to what the user needs.

Really disappointed in you guys.

I too have gotten many customers to buy in to your product and instead of paying all that money again, they want new solution.

Actually, I worked with a Sonos employee (he was a good client) a while ago and we grew close. Employee and family discount at Sonos was 50% he told me, he offered to buy a couple of speakers for me under the employee program (this was before they required registration), but things may have changed since then . . .

. . . I didn’t want to take advantage of the relationship, so never did it. Kinda surprised I didn’t now that I look back.

That's really nice. I meant vendor though, not actual Sonos employee but a reseller.

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chickentender

but if legacy you might be better served purchasing 2nd hand. This is the route I’m taking.

How do you know the second hand speaker you are purchasing hasn’t already been bricked by having been used in a “trade up” by the original owner?

You can’t even test it before handing over cash to someone, because they might have done the “trade up” and the delayed bricking just hasn’t kicked in yet.

@ausono - You check first. I’m not talking about Ebay, but rather local listings (there are heaps in my area, the number growing). Tell the seller you must see the unit connected to a controller (you can then look in the speaker settings to see if the countdown is initiated. Or if it’s been factory-reset you can try to connect to it with your controller app; it its been recycled it will tell you it’s not able to be joined to any network

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3573?language=en_US

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ausono

Enthusiast I

you can then look in the speaker settings to see if the countdown is initiated. Or if it’s been factory-reset you can try to connect to it with your controller app; it its been recycled it will tell you it’s not able to be joined to any network.

I haven’t dared to touch anything that says “trade up” for fear of bricking my own units, so I wasn’t aware that there was a way to tell that the countdown was running.

Knowing that they have the countdown running like that and available via the settings, I find it very odd that they say it is irreversible even while the countdown is still active.

I suppose you could also still use ebay/paypal buyer protections if a seller ripped you off.

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CaptainSemtext

Lyricist I

What am I missing? I thought Sonos did a U-turn last Thursday and said legacy products would NOT be bricked in the foreseeable future?

One thing to consider… while the Sonos stock is obviously declining, (it still has a bit to go before the $10 low of last August), we don’t want Sonos to fail because if they go out of business then all of our products will be automatically bricked :-(

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billiejoe87

Chromatic Producer I

If Sonos allow you to add new purchased speakers to a “legacy” system as part of their compromise then that at least is a workable solution for the time being. I don’t know how they plan to do this when new speakers will likely already be a much newer firmware version than what legacy players are running.

I think most of us are probably pretty happy with Sonos current feature set, although obviously API changes though very irregular will be a problem.

Of course it would be great if they worked out a solution in a split system of modern and legacy where you could still group your speakers, but I doubt this will happen unless a lot of pressure is put on Sonos.

Denon Heos is looking more attractive everyday. If it wasn’t for the fact Sonos are the only wireless speaker company with Apple Music built into their app I would probably start replacing my gear.

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1 x Arc, 1 x Beam Gen 2, 1 x Amp, 2 x Sonos In Ceiling Speakers, 2 x Sub, 4 x Sonos Ones, 2 x Sonos Era 100, 5 x Symfonisk Lamp (Gen 2)

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luvlylou

Lyricist III

so heading for 2,800 comments here, almost all of which are saying we will never buy Sonos again…

81% of trustpilot reviews now 1 star, warning people not to buy...

share price continuing to slide…

and still no further word from Sonos… the silence is deafening.…

guess Sonos really is intent on treating all their loyal customers with contempt.

so sad.

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user_end_of_lifed

Enthusiast II

What am I missing? I thought Sonos did a U-turn last Thursday and said legacy products would NOT be bricked in the foreseeable future?

One thing to consider… while the Sonos stock is obviously declining, (it still has a bit to go before the $10 low of last August), we don’t want Sonos to fail because if they go out of business then all of our products will be automatically bricked :-(

You would not be the only one who thought that. Large swathes or the tech press apparently came to the same conclusion. The CEO statement just said the same things as the original announcement wrapped in some fluff about being sorry that we’re all upset about it.

Unless Sonos reverse course your system is effectively dead at this point, it’s just a question of when. The whole house audio system is dead. Why would anyone continue to build, or start to build, a Sonos system knowing that at some point in the future some of their devices will be fractured off in to a legacy network?

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themetman

Contributor I

I am so disenchanted with Sonos despite having used it since 2007 I am going to sell by Legacy (Still working) and Non Legacy products as soon as I can and set up a HiFiBerry system with Max2Play instead.

Grrrr!!!!!!

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Beagle

Enthusiast I

What am I missing? I thought Sonos did a U-turn last Thursday and said legacy products would NOT be bricked in the foreseeable future?

One thing to consider… while the Sonos stock is obviously declining, (it still has a bit to go before the $10 low of last August), we don’t want Sonos to fail because if they go out of business then all of our products will be automatically bricked :-(

Not sure if Sonos going bust would be good or bad. If they did go under there would be a strong possibility that one of their competitors would buy them and integrate Sonos into their products.

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