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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D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

The term ‘hostage’ implies that there are no technical reasons involved, and that Sonos could continue applying updates, they just choose not to. Since Sonos states there are technical reasons, and that they have a history of supporting updates on older units, there is reason to believe Sonos is telling the truth here. You obviously don’t have to believe, but it’s not definitely incorrect either.

But it IS a hostage situation because sonos would clearly be able to make the legacy products work and still have newer firmware versions on the newer products.

Sonos has CHOSEN that they will not make a legacy software for the older speakers, this is a CHOICE.

Nothing prevents them from doing so, and as for “technical reasons” i find it hard to understand what technical reasons there should be for a “modern” speaker to not be able to communicate with the older speakers, when it comes to already established features.

No one is demanding that they keep adding new features to the speakers, but to say “Hey, due to hardware limitations, we are not able to make these speakers do, what they do today after May“.

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J

John B

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I also think a gen 2 Playbar is a likely new product soon. So the main reason I would not buy one now is the hope of a better product The fact that it might have a shorter period of guaranteed updates might be a minor factor but wouldn't be a big thing for me.

The ZP80 has been kept alive and fully functioning for 16 years on 32MB, through many developments unthought of when it was designed. When you talk about buying for five years you are still repeating the error of treating a minimum guarantee as an expectation.

I haven't yet thought of any product 'this product is only guaramteed for 2 ysars so they must be expecting it to fail then'.

Really? I would think you are in the minority if you aren’t concerned about updates. Some Connects sold in 2015 will only got 4.5 years of new feature updates.

No. Someone buying a Connect now has a guarantee of at least 5 years. You really have problems grasping this fact.

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Johnas

Enthusiast II

Is anyone aware of a commercial audio system that consists of a local/on premise streaming device that reads streams/audio from diverse sources, such as spotify, local file servers, CD players, and outputs streams to ‘dumb’ wirelessly connected speakers that can be grouped etcetera?

Just to be clear, what you are asking for sounds like sonos, but the distinction between Sonos and this solution you are looking for is “dumb” speakers?

Pretty much but I was thinking more of one central streaming server to minimise the replacement burden if it goes obsolete or fails. Also is there such a thing as ‘dumb’ wireless speakers, if so is there a standard communications protocol between these and a sender/server?

I don’t know of a commercial solution. I’ve started testing an open source solution called Picoreplayer which does what you ask, but it isn’t an out of the box solution by any means.

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G

Goodbye Sonos

Enthusiast II

“Breaking the multiroom part OR keeping all the other modern units hostage, IS the worst case”

^ BUT this is what they are doing - split your system to get updates for your new units and you no longer have multiroom grouping available as confirmed on twitter by Sonos and reported earlier on this thread; otherwise run old and new as a legacy system and you get no updates cor your new units again confirmed by Sonos on twitter.

The term ‘hostage’ implies that there are no technical reasons involved, and that Sonos could continue applying updates, they just choose not to. Since Sonos states there are technical reasons, and that they have a history of supporting updates on older units, there is reason to believe Sonos is telling the truth here. You obviously don’t have to believe, but it’s not definitely incorrect either.

As far as worse case, it’s not hard to imagine other scenarios that could be worse. Sonos could have opted not to provide to provide and support a legacy mode at all, and just cut out all the legacy products entirely. Or they could have ended the product line and started a new one, with no compatibility between the two. Or they could have just ended business altogether and provided no new products and features entirely. Or may be sold to someone like Amazon or Google, who then choose to removed features that didn’t fit their corporate goals (like using their competitors streaming and voice services).

The term hostage implies nothing of the sort - you are inferring you own meaning into my words. I meant our new units are held hostage at old software versions if we use them in a “legacy” system

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DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

I also think a gen 2 Playbar is a likely new product soon. So the main reason I would not buy one now is the hope of a better product The fact that it might have a shorter period of guaranteed updates might be a minor factor but wouldn't be a big thing for me.

The ZP80 has been kept alive and fully functioning for 16 years on 32MB, through many developments unthought of when it was designed. When you talk about buying for five years you are still repeating the error of treating a minimum guarantee as an expectation.

I haven't yet thought of any product 'this product is only guaramteed for 2 ysars so they must be expecting it to fail then'.

So you would gladly buy a 7 year old product that you expect to be superseeded soon and be happy about a 5 year support, when the new one would potentially be 12 years before being obsolete.

Yes it is 16 years old and in those 16 years it has been refined, but why is it that it is suddenly not possible to keep it doing what it has always been able to.

I have a 7 year old android phone in my drawer as backup for when someone in my house breaks their phone and need a backup.

The manufacturer stopped updating it many years ago, but it is still able to receive and make calls even though i might call someone with a modern android phone, i can still send and receive text messages and it will still accept any Mp3 i throw at it as a ringtone.

The core functionality of my android phone is intact, even though it has not got all of the new features of newer phones.

What sonos does is a bit like if my new android phone would not update the firmware because it detects that my old phone is on the network and if i want to update the new android phone i first have to discard my old phone or put it on another network where i can not call my new phone.