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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JonY

Lyricist I

Really disappointed with Sonos. having acquired 8 Play Ones i was just about to acquire the TV Soundbar and bass unit but now thinking again unless Sonos can guarantee that they can be used for many years to come.. Thinking about going back to wired solutions. I don’t want speakers with “Voice”. Big brother is ver present and i don’t want anything that is a real point of weakness. Sonos please listen to the many of us who think you have great product

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andy_120

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 :-(

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.

What you are missing is that they never said that speakers were going to be ‘bricked’. They always said that updates would cease but the speakers would continue to function. This thread has set new standards in misunderstanding and misinformation among the user base, and not in a good way.

Absolute rubbish, there is no misunderstanding at all

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rick9957

Lyricist III

would be good if Sonos products could be reverted to older operating systems. My concern is loosing functionality I have now by a update and not being able to go back. Sort of like the dock becoming useless due to an update even though it worked on the prior version

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Prahasaurus

Lyricist I

What an absolute disaster. I’m scared to death to update my Sonos system. I bought Sonos - and paid more money than other solutions - simply because of the clean design, simplicity of use, and acceptable sound quality. Now you are threatening to brick my system? But not really, but kinda? So much for simplicity and sound quality!

It’s amazing how much goodwill you have destroyed with me over this fiasco. Just the fact that some idiots in your company even tried to get away with this is mind-boggling. The CEO email was simply CYA to prevent more damage. Just really unbelievable how companies will try to screw you any way they can.

I am moving into a new home soon, and had no issues with expanding my Sonos system to accommodate. Now I’m completely confused and really scared to invest any more money into a company that thinks this way, just out of control greed. So now I will be exploring other options.

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amun

@MIBUK

To not have an action plan in place before announcing legacy items

They have a plan in place - it’s spelt out in their SEC submission. They intend to weather the storm of customer complaints and carry on as they intended. They’ve made a slight concession over bug fixes and services, but that could have been part of the plan.

There has been a lot of fire and fury on these two threads (justified, IMHO) but it’s already dying down - if they wait another few days then they’ll persuade themselves that the worst is over, and that their loss is likely to be limited to about 10k customers who, having large systems already, probably aren’t spending that much at the moment. Presumably, they feel that ‘trendy’ features like voice and HiRes will win them many more customers in the future.

They may even offer a better trade in deal or some other concession, at which point people may feel that they’ve ‘won’ and that ‘Sonos have listened’, so people forget that they’ve still been shafted.

I very much hope that I’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath...

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amun

What an absolute disaster. I’m scared to death to update my Sonos system.

So don’t do it - turn off all the auto updates on the controllers and, if you ccan, block outgoing traffic on port 4444 on your router.

Take back control….

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attacama40

Headliner I

I’ve vented my spleen in the previous thread and earlier in this one a good few times.

Not one to over react (as pi**ed off as everyone else that said) but this really has prompted me to look at alternatives moving forward.

Roon with Tidal is quite amazing … been road testing it after reading advice of others on this thread, with my Sonos boxes the last 24 hrs. I expected not so much but see a lot to like!

It’s especially good for those of us with ceiling (or external) speakers.

It’s a bit hard get your head round at first …. DAC’s, Amps and stuff that sounds like that. but in reality it’s simple and sounds amazing.

I installed it on my tired old i3 laptop and had it search for my NAS and Sonos, Chromecasts, Nvidia Shield and TV’s and it found the lot and set them up without a hitch. Also a very active and enthusiastic support community they have as well.

I’d prefer a compelling solution from Sonos that pi**ed off as we all maybe, at least solves the core issue if not brings back the love! But this alternative is very interesting. Not just an emotional response.

Going forward, if I do invest again in Sonos it 100% will not be with ‘speaker in box’ solutions like Play models …. Sonos Amp, maybe. But any Sonos product has to be with external speakers and if sensible external amplification and DAC’s etc …. at least the damage is limited in that scenario … with Sonos or any other fly by night. …. keep your small format amp, expensive speakers and loose the clever network box. Not ideal but way way cheaper and less damaging.

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MIBUK

Enthusiast II

@MIBUK

To not have an action plan in place before announcing legacy items

They have a plan in place - it’s spelt out in their SEC submission. They intend to weather the storm of customer complaints and carry on as they intended. They’ve made a slight concession over bug fixes and services, but that could have been part of the plan.

There has been a lot of fire and fury on these two threads (justified, IMHO) but it’s already dying down - if they wait another few days then they’ll persuade themselves that the worst is over, and that their loss is likely to be limited to about 10k customers who, having large systems already, probably aren’t spending that much at the moment. Presumably, they feel that ‘trendy’ features like voice and HiRes will win them many more customers in the future.

They may even offer a better trade in deal or some other concession, at which point people may feel that they’ve ‘won’ and that ‘Sonos have listened’, so people forget that they’ve still been shafted.

I very much hope that I’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath...

Well, you can call it a plan. Maybe a plan A. I’ve seen far better plans. Do they have a plan B? They issue an announcement that suggested your legacy items would no longer work in tandem with newer ones. Or if they were working with each other, then newer products wouldn’t get updates. It seems that the CEO has said that will not be the case, although his statement was still ambiguous.

37% of new product sales are from current owners who also act as brand ambassadors helping sales through word of mouth. Have they done the calculations on word of mouth sales? They sell products at premium prices when competitors are selling more in a month than they do in a year at a far lower cost. With the illusion of high end gear not being guaranteed for more tan 5 to 10 years, why would anybody pay premium?

Unless they have a unique product or new features that will make customers salivate, then I suspect they have no plan B. Even with unique offerings, the vast majority just want to stream music and radio. They don’t want/need alexa/google built in. They don’t even support Dolby Atmos and other more common technologies ie. 24 bit. So for the even more demanding customers, they’re not going to help turn around the company imho.

I want Sonos to get through this, but they must resolve these issues that have been repeated time & time again. A friend of mine I have been gently nudging to buy Sonos told me yesterday that he was looking to get a couple. I told him what happened and now he will wait like many others.

Their discount offer to upgrade is too small and considering their competitors are offering products cheaper than the post-discount Sonos pricing, I suspect many won’t upgrade. They have now put themselves into a corner and the question will be, will they take the pre-january customer focus approach or now that they’re a public listed company, bet on black and hope it doesn’t land on red. The Board members won’t lose much if they get this wrong. But millions of customers and their staff will suffer financial losses.

The next move will determine their survival imho. Because even customers who have newer products or plan to buy newer ones, they will be waiting on Sonos’s next move before they decide what step to take next. I bet their accredited retailers are very angry as well and are losing sales. Ride the storm? It’s a category 2 hurricane level at the moment imho.

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Act in haste, repent at leisure.

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attacama40

Headliner I

What an absolute disaster. I’m scared to death to update my Sonos system.

So don’t do it - turn off all the auto updates on the controllers and, if you ccan, block outgoing traffic on port 4444 on your router.

Take back control….

How do you switch off updates? Long time Sonos user but not sure how you do that on Win 10 app? Or does it need be on Android?

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rick9957

Lyricist III

Has anyone tried to set up two Sonos nets to separate legacy and modern products. Is there any interference between the two nets? Lastly I wonder if the port line out on the modern net could be used to provide the input on the legacy net and if the two nets would still be in sync. If they are in sync then this solves the issue of compatibility although it would be more complex with two routers and two boosts and 2 controllers on the separate networks

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