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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chickentender

This analogy sucks. In many ways. I know that.

Offcourse the analogy sucks, because you try to make “Things that break, due to wear” the same as “Things that work but is still being disabled”.

Imagine you put your car in for it’s 8 year service and when you get it back the rep. tells you that there were a security update they had to install for your car, because of some software fault that could affect the cars driveability.

Oh and that since all the car’s ECU’s must have the same firmware version, they have had to disable the climate control, because that could not be updated to the new firmware and thus had to be disabled for the rest of the car to work.

I bet you would be LIVID and DEMAND that they undid this.

Honestly, that extension to the analogy sucks just as much. :)
Yes, I’d be livid. But if my car was out of warranty it wouldn’t be in taken to the authorized service center in the first place, in keeping this hybrid analogy at least somewhat congruous, nor would a firmware change to ECUs affect the climate control if it were in warranty.
(This is fun and all. But I’m legitimately sorry I opened another analogy can o’ worms.)

I think the analogy is a very good one. When an analogy is made, there is always some leeway as to the points you make. If you change the action as postulated, your not referring to the same point being made. In this case, the assumption is that the car is taken to the authorized service center, not anywhere else. And you must assume for this car, the climate control is affected by the ECU firmware. With that as a given, point made.

The problem is that my initial analogy was reframed above as needed, recontextualized because “Things that break due to wear” isn’t congruous to “Things that work but is still being disabled”… This, when the entire point of my analogy was about expectation of service, and never had a prayer of being entirely congruous with the Sonos situation we find ourselves in (not a prayer on many levels, as I was sure to point out to begin) any more than the reframing does. What follows are rhetorical questions framed as legitimate ones and they lead down a rabbit hole of “what if’s”.

Again, my only real point was about reasonable expectation of service/support, and I accept that the analogy breaks down quickly, just as any other does. (Which is why I wish I could delete it, frankly.)

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S

sm75382

Enthusiast II

Why are there 125 pages when yesterday there was over 170?

they have been moved to the legacy section of the forum.

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C

Cormacahern

Contributor I

I was waiting for the Sonos headphones. I decided to go with Bose instead because of the way Sonos are treating their (heretofore) loyal customers.

I'm now finished with Sonos.

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baconator

Trending Lyricist I

Just seen this about email addresses inadvertently been exposed on a Sonos email response on this issue. Not cool and more bad press unfortunately.

Anyone get an email and want to share the contents?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51315460

Thanks for posting, this needs more views because they don't know what they are doing. I'm in IT and this is a big deal. Get ready for SPAM and phishing emails people. Could look like an email from Sonos as well. Read before you click.

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D

Danos1

Trending Lyricist I

I was hoping Sonos would release a “New plan forward” this week after so much negative feedback.

The cold shoulder towards their customers this week is sad.

Did the email that leaked everyone’s email address address any new changes to their Legacy plan?

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Ryan SAuthor

Retired Sonos Staff

@Danos1, we’ll be sure to share any new information in here, don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything new. The email was sent in response to a number of customer inquiries letting them know that the support team was working to answer their questions but were working through a lot of contacts and that it’d take longer than normal to get responses. No further information on the legacy process was included.

We apologized to those affected by this error and have put in place processes to ensure it does not happen again.

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T

Todd aus

Lyricist I

Being in the tech industry myself, I can tell you any vendor that has survived the last 20 years has ensured new products are backwards comparable and legacy products work to the same level as when they were purchased.

Your up sell is the new product range and how it has improved over the previous so it entices the customer to expand or upgrade plus the added sale of replacement and damaged units. You don’t do this by limiting the previous model and expect to stay around - I have seen many try.,.,

The legacy announcement just gives the client the motivation to move brands.

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axelbauer

Contributor I

Hi,

I am sorry if the following has been discussed earlier.

As I understand now and read between the lines from the most recent Sonos announcements, Sonos now suggests to partition the network in "new" and "legacy" groups of devices to allow different software versions within a home. More or less like parallel tenants or homes, by just implementing this functionality in the controller software.

I also assume that those device groups would not be able to interact with one another, like it would not be possible to output synchronous multi-room across both groups of devices.

If this is correct or likely, I do understand that the "legacy" devices are lacking RAM, CPU power and maybe other hardware such as modern WiFi etc. to do everything planned in the future. But there should be a better solution than this "partitioning", such as:

- a "slave" role for legacy devices so they cannot become a "master" and never have to interface with Spotify, Apple Music and all the other services

- this could be a special limited software image which certainly can be implemented with the resources given on legacy hardware

- such "slave" roles are already there with the surround speakers of the Playbase or maybe even with the second speaker of a stereo pair

- this of course would imply at least one "new" generation speaker in your system

- it would be also possible to limit "legacy" devices to Ethernet connectivity if a new WiFi 5GHz mesh network is planned in the future and so on.

For me, some new limitations with "legacy" equipment are perfectly acceptable and maybe necessary to be able to modernize the system. The networking part of Sonos is quite old now and also early devices may lack enough resources to implement functionality like AirPlay2. But losing essential functionality such as "synchronous multi-room sound" is not acceptable for me, especially if there's no reason for it - other than limited investment in software development.

Maybe it's just greed, but then it obviously backfired...

A.

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G

Goodbye Sonos

Enthusiast II

Ryan could you answer my question about rental speakers?

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Ryan SAuthor

Retired Sonos Staff

Ryan could you answer my question about rental speakers?

Sure, it seemed rhetorical:

I know it’s bad form to reply to myself but I wanted to share this link, I was taking the mick But a quick google search popped this up! Think I just saw the future……

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7547409/Sonos-letting-customers-rent-speakers-16-month-service-expand-worldwide.html

Wow Sonos is ALREADY renting speakers on a monthly contract!!!

I wouldn’t personally ever rent durable goods.

Ryan - is this new future for Sonos? The article says its going to be a worldwide scheme - is that the case?

No, this is not the “new future for Sonos”. We have no plans for this to replace purchasing products and bringing them home. The article is from October when we started testing out a new way for people to try Sonos in their homes. Only some Sonos devices are available through the Flex program, and it’s only available in the Netherlands. Some people would rather pay smaller monthly fees for a limited time instead of purchasing them outright, or building a system over time. This is the test of an option to see if people are interested.

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