Skip to main content
Ryan S
Ryan S
Retired Sonos Staff
Jan 22, 2020 3:20 PM UTC

End of Software Support - Clarifications

  • Dec 8, 2022 11:29 AM UTC
  • 4256 replies
  • 270560 views
  • Translate All
End of Software Support - Clarifications

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

    This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

    4256 replies

    Show previous replies
    Smilja
    Smilja
    Mar 6, 2020 2:12 PM UTC

    It's great that Sonos have seen sense and decided you no longer had to throw away perfectly functioning devices.  The people tirelessly defending the incentive will now think its the right thing too now presumably.

     

    Sonos purely disclosed to the world that the chink in their armour is their weak management. Come May one still will have to put their system into ‘legacy mode’ in order to group modern and legacy items together. No shiny new features for this setup until one get rid of the legacy gear.

    Translate
    »And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space, Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.« (›Windmills Of Your Mind‹ [1967]. Music by Michel Legrand ; English lyrics written by Alan & Marilyn Bergman)
      sjw
      Local Superstar
      Mar 6, 2020 2:19 PM UTC

      I guess the point is they still have Legacy devices to do that with and they're not in landfill.

      Translate
      Kumar
      Mar 6, 2020 2:48 PM UTC

       Come May one still will have to put their system into ‘legacy mode’ in order to group modern and legacy items together. No shiny new features for this setup until one get rid of the legacy gear.

      For those of us that see these as just good speakers that deliver music, shiny features are no attraction.

      Translate
        User694694
        User694694
        Enthusiast II
        Mar 6, 2020 3:02 PM UTC

        It's great that Sonos have seen sense and decided you no longer had to throw away perfectly functioning devices.  The people tirelessly defending the incentive will now think its the right thing too now presumably.

         

        Sonos purely disclosed to the world that the chink in their armour is their weak management. Come May one still will have to put their system into ‘legacy mode’ in order to group modern and legacy items together. No shiny new features for this setup until one get rid of the legacy gear.

        Personally, I don’t mind putting my system into legacy mode as I don’t care about new features (any I can think of currently), but I understand that others may feel different. My current contingency plans have gone from Bluesound full scale replacement to Roon. I had never heard of Roon a month ago, but it seems like a really good solution if the Sonos software/firmware becomes stagnant and unable to keep up with changes with streaming music services. At $500 for a lifetime subscription, it seems pretty reasonable (to me anyway). I keep both NAS and a couple servers running all the time in my home and office anyway, so using one to install a Roon core isn’t going to change any hardware for me. I’m curious to know if Roon will be able to group legacy and non-legacy Sonos together. I doubt we’ll know until May.

        Translate
        DK_Madsen
        Enthusiast II
        Mar 6, 2020 4:21 PM UTC

        Wow

         

        Just checked in here because i saw that Sonos has scrapped the recycle program

        So anyone with a legacy product can still get 30% but their old product will not be bricked.

        People, that has already taken advantage of the 30% trade in, prior to this, will not be able to get their bricked products reactivated.

        So basically, those that were quick to trade in their sonos speaker, is getting screwed over here, big time.

        I can get the 30% off, buy a Play 5 2.gen and sell my Play 5 1.gen for a price, but anyone that took the offer, before yesterday, dont have that option.

         

        I bet that there are going to be a lot of angry costumers out there, that feel betrayed by sonos by this move.

        Also, it seems that the Sonos stock has been on a steady decline since January, and from what i can see, they are down about 33% since.

         

        I would personally like to thank Sonos...I had plans for a sonos sub and a sonos one for a hobby room, but i luckily had not bought anything. (Thanks for making it easy to choose between more sonos or a new PC)

        This message was written from the new PC, i bought with the money i would otherwise probably have spent on Sonos products.

        Translate
          melvimbe
          melvimbe
          Mar 6, 2020 4:21 PM UTC

          So it seems it was possible to communicate an effective message with the audience.

          The reasonable expectations of the 80% were exactly that, reasonable.

           

           

          Yes and no.  While obviously this change course would not have occurred without customer’s reaction to the recycle aspect of the trade in, I would bet that there were other factors effect as well.  You could argue that the addition of legacy products losing support made it a bit more unecessary for Sonos to be concerned about legacy item resale cutting into Sonos sales, or something like that.    And although there were complaints about recycling, they are not nearly as big as the complaints about legacy products no longer receiving updates.  I’m not saying complaints are irrelevant or anything like that.  I just wouldn’t expect that Sonos to start reacting and reversing every decision that has a customer backlash.

           

          And it’s a solid call by Sonos. It will (as said many times) restore confidence in the high price paying user base.

           

           

          Maybe.  Again, the complaints were higher about loss of updates then there were about recycling...although perhaps the combination of the two makes the loss of updates a lot more palatable?  Don’t know.  Regardless, I don’t know that a customer can see a downside to the current trade up program at all. 

           

          It will make zero difference to the evangelists and the frustrated folk may still be frustrated. But for the rest of us, it’s a very solid call.

           

           

          I don’t know that Sonos customers can be cleanly separated into these groups, or how big the ‘rest of us’ is/are.    I tend to feel that of the options of Trade In w/recycle, trade in w/o recycle from the beginning, and switching from w/recycle to w/o recycle mid program...the last option is definitely not the best.    Although it’s very much an unknown to me, I do have a concern that a trade up program  w/o recycle is financially bad for Sonos.  The did do recycling for a reason, which may not be as important as it used to be.  As a consumer, I do want Sonos to do well as a company, so that they can continue to provide products and services for many years to come.

           

          I can now go ahead and ‘buy more Sonos stuff’ …. life is simple.

          That was all that was needed.

          Now we can wait till May for the details, the nuances, the bland tech detail etc.

          So, so simple and CE marketing 1-0-1.

          And none of this was technical, it was business, Simple. But good news. 

          Let’s keep this new straight line Sonos. And lets factor the clear feeling from the buying public going forward into product positioning.

           

          Yea, I hope it does generate a lot of goodwill with customers.  I’m sure it will for some as it has for you, and the many without any legacy Sonos are likely to not care at all.  Those customers with thousands invested can perhaps  find it a bit easier to upgrade to modern, since they can use both trade in and used sale revenue to lower the cost of replacement.

          Translate
          Danny
            DK_Madsen
            Enthusiast II
            Mar 6, 2020 4:26 PM UTC

             

            Maybe.  Again, the complaints were higher about loss of updates then there were about recycling...although perhaps the combination of the two makes the loss of updates a lot more palatable?  Don’t know.  Regardless, I don’t know that a customer can see a downside to the current trade up program at all.

            From what i remember, the biggest complaint was not actually that they would stop updating the legacy products, but that they said that legacy products would not be able to communicate with modern products and do the things that were available today.

             

            For example multi room streaming of MP3’s ….

            Translate
              attacama40
              Headliner I
              Mar 6, 2020 6:05 PM UTC

              So it seems it was possible to communicate an effective message with the audience.

              The reasonable expectations of the 80% were exactly that, reasonable.

               

               

              Yes and no.  While obviously this change course would not have occurred without customer’s reaction to the recycle aspect of the trade in, I would bet that there were other factors effect as well.  You could argue that the addition of legacy products losing support made it a bit more unecessary for Sonos to be concerned about legacy item resale cutting into Sonos sales, or something like that.    And although there were complaints about recycling, they are not nearly as big as the complaints about legacy products no longer receiving updates.  I’m not saying complaints are irrelevant or anything like that.  I just wouldn’t expect that Sonos to start reacting and reversing every decision that has a customer backlash.

               

              And it’s a solid call by Sonos. It will (as said many times) restore confidence in the high price paying user base.

               

               

              Maybe.  Again, the complaints were higher about loss of updates then there were about recycling...although perhaps the combination of the two makes the loss of updates a lot more palatable?  Don’t know.  Regardless, I don’t know that a customer can see a downside to the current trade up program at all. 

               

              It will make zero difference to the evangelists and the frustrated folk may still be frustrated. But for the rest of us, it’s a very solid call.

               

               

              I don’t know that Sonos customers can be cleanly separated into these groups, or how big the ‘rest of us’ is/are.    I tend to feel that of the options of Trade In w/recycle, trade in w/o recycle from the beginning, and switching from w/recycle to w/o recycle mid program...the last option is definitely not the best.    Although it’s very much an unknown to me, I do have a concern that a trade up program  w/o recycle is financially bad for Sonos.  The did do recycling for a reason, which may not be as important as it used to be.  As a consumer, I do want Sonos to do well as a company, so that they can continue to provide products and services for many years to come.

               

              I can now go ahead and ‘buy more Sonos stuff’ …. life is simple.

              That was all that was needed.

              Now we can wait till May for the details, the nuances, the bland tech detail etc.

              So, so simple and CE marketing 1-0-1.

              And none of this was technical, it was business, Simple. But good news. 

              Let’s keep this new straight line Sonos. And lets factor the clear feeling from the buying public going forward into product positioning.

               

              Yea, I hope it does generate a lot of goodwill with customers.  I’m sure it will for some as it has for you, and the many without any legacy Sonos are likely to not care at all.  Those customers with thousands invested can perhaps  find it a bit easier to upgrade to modern, since they can use both trade in and used sale revenue to lower the cost of replacement.

               

              I can’t count into three decks with these conversations like you can Danny … too many maybe’s and variables for me. :-)

              I just do know that corporates that talk to their folks do better than those who wait for a perfect tack into the wind.

              I speak from a position of knowledge and experience without sounding big sorted. Sonos played everything entirely wrong. A shame as their product and service is good as others have mentioned. Like or loath Sonos, it’s impossible to defend that statement. I like Sonos but I can also be dispassionate about their poor decisions and communications.

              Sonos lost the comms initiative, delayed, realised it, corrected it and that’s ok for me and seems a few others. 

              Is it the full fat solution? No, as Kumar and others have said. We’ll see the tech fluff in May. 

              Regardless it’s a correction and one that was requested and should have come three weeks back. Nevermind, it’s here now. I may return to being ‘white box man’ but I have seen the emperors new clothes. :-)   

               

              Translate
                baconator
                baconator
                Trending Lyricist I
                Mar 6, 2020 6:51 PM UTC

                This news really doesn't change anything, legacy and modern will still not talk. I'm still out, Denon here I come.

                Translate
                  Saucerman
                  Enthusiast I
                  Mar 6, 2020 6:52 PM UTC

                  SaS….Speakers as a Service model…..I’m out too…….

                  Translate
                    Show more replies
                    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement