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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A

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...

Well, you can call it a plan. Maybe a plan A. I’ve seen far better plans.

I didn’t say that I thought that it was a good plan, just that they appear to have one :frowning2:

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W

WSu

Enthusiast II

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.

They also (IMHO) need to make an absolute commitment to what they’re calling “current” modern units because the very use of the word “current” implies they will pull this same thing again at some point.

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A

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….

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?

You used to be able to do it on the PC controller, but it looks like they’ve removed it from the later versions…. On the android controller, it’s under Settings/System/System Updates - there’s a toggle switch for ‘Update Automatically’. You probably also need to stop the apps themselves updating (android and any Apple ones)

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U

user_end_of_lifed

Enthusiast II

You used to be able to do it on the PC controller, but it looks like they’ve removed it from the later versions…. On the android controller, it’s under Settings/System/System Updates - there’s a toggle switch for ‘Update Automatically’. You probably also need to stop the apps themselves updating (android and any Apple ones)

Which raises some interesting questions about how Sonos’ ‘just stop updating and stay legacy’ idea will work. I don’t think it’s possible to stop one individual app updating automatically on iOS, it’s all manual or all automatic.

There have been plenty of times in the past when I’ve gone to use the Sonos app and it’s said ‘no Sonos for you until you let me update*’, which I presume is when the iOS app has gotten ahead of the Sonos software.
So is that going to change now?

* = This is very annoying and further evidence that Sonos have no idea how to create standard interfaces that are compatible across software versions.

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M

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.

I didn’t say that I thought that it was a good plan, just that they appear to have one :frowning2:

I know 🙂, but they seem to think it was a good one or the best they were prepared to do. Anyway, we’ll see if their plans change. If they don’t, then I will assume what you stated….is that they expect to ride out the storm. Imho, they will be proven wrong if that’s the road they take. There’s still a window of opportunity to recover this.

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Act in haste, repent at leisure.

G

Goodbye Sonos

Enthusiast II

Discussion about this will die down obviously, but people ultimately make most decisions mostly based on emotions, and when you upset your customers that feeling doesn’t go away easily. Just because people stop or reduce talking about something doesn’t mean they’re okay with it.

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R

robbieduncan

Lyricist III

I work in the software/IT industry. I can write code. With that out of the way!

I see no reason that the firmware in “modern” units which have loads of memory and storage could handle two versions of the protocol: modern and legacy. If a legacy unit is added to any group then all modern units would fall back to legacy protocol (and only support legacy functions and capabilities). With all modern units obviously modern capabilities would work.

This would require a finalised/never changing legacy protocol but that seems doable. This is an extensible solution: next legacy round this can be done again. Obviously you don’t want to support hundreds of versions/combinations but a handful seems manageable.

However the problem (and quite possibly the reason for not doing this) is that it would be confusing for users. Let’s imagine a new music service is only available on modern units. In a mixed network you could start playback on a modern unit, add another modern unit and all would be fine. The second you added a legacy unit playback would stop. Support nightmare.

However I feel this would be preferable to most of us

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F

FJM

Contributor I

To All readers,

CEO Patrick’s apology letter to customers….advising that they really “got it wrong” with a explanation is all BS!

Attached is the SEC filing identified the fact that management KNEW there would be negative possibilities….”SO HOW DOES THIS CEO” send out a letter to customers filled with SPIN that “they got the message out incorrectly”???

https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/esgbhq/sonos_sec_filing_for_q4_2019_predicts_the_future/

The new WALL STREET management has no honesty nor will I provide any consideration of TRUST….they are “playing” us…..SPIN,SPIN,SPIN...$$$

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C

chuckjackson

Lyricist I

I have spent a significant amount of time reading the various comments from once happy customers. For me, I have invested thousands of dollars into high end stereo systems and speakers. Some of those products are in excess of 15 years old-and the companies are still in business. I also still have hundreds of albums and cds, as I appreciate the quality over streaming. Sonos for me was used as a peripheral music system that covered my back yard, office and deck areas. I only have 5 products 4 of which have been classified as obsolete.
What is really difficult for me is to understand how your store distributors can be selling products in 2014, 2015 and 2016, which are all of a sudden obsolete. I know that your company says that they don’t have the capability to handle the new updates, but didn’t you know this 3 or 4 years ago? Is this a new revelation to your engineering and technical teams? And finally, as I said this is not my main source of music, I am trying to figure out WHAT NEW UPDATES YOU ARE PROVIDING? To me, each new update REMOVES FUNCTIONALITY! The fact that I cannot play music that I have purchased and added to my iPad or cell is ridiculous. That update was one of the beginning steps of demise. Your customers pay a lot of money for your systems and we should never lose functionality on an existing product. What important functionality has been added? I am now afraid to do any additional updates. What were you and your management team thinking...other than how do we increase our revenues?

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J

johngolfuk

Enthusiast II

I don’t think it’s possible to stop one individual app updating automatically on iOS, it’s all manual or all automatic.

It is…….

https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/the-sonos-brexit-and-pragmatic-ways-past-it-6836056/index12.html#post16400653

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