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

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

Totally agree.

Only thing that changed is that they will not brick the old Sonos, if you get the 30% off.

This move comes to late to satisfy the angry costumers, the stock prices has plummeted with 33%, most people that would have realistically wanted to do the trade, has done so.

This move is not gonna soften the angry sonos owners, but it will probably enrage the people that took the deal and bricked their old unit.

So even more dissatisfied sonos costumers from now on.

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melvimbe

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 ….

I was referring to all aspect of the Sonos annoucement in January for upcoming May changes when I stated “loss of updates”, not any particular aspect. I would agreement that the aspect you mention is likely the biggest complaint.

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Danny

melvimbe

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

I can’t speak with much more certainty right now.

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’m not against sharing information, but I know that reversing course, even when the new course is right, is never as good as taking the right course from the beginning. So I’d say if you can’t your course with certainty, it’s better to say nothing at all.

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.

Hindsight being 20/20 and all, but I there certainly are plenty of places where Sonos could have communicated better, timed announcements better, and got the decision right the first time.

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. :-)

I don’t think the correction should have come 3 weeks ago, I think it should never have needed correction to begin with. I was ok with the recylce program before, and I’m ok with it now.

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Danny

K

Kumar

This move is not gonna soften the angry sonos owners, but it will probably enrage the people that took the deal and bricked their old unit.

So even more dissatisfied sonos costumers from now on.

That’s up to Sonos and how leaden footed Sonos leadership shows itself to be - or not. I am reasonably sure that there is a way for Sonos to undo what they did remotely - bricking. If that be the case, the only ones enraged will be those that tossed their units into landfills either on their own or via a return to Sonos. These folk now have only themselves to blame if they feel hard done by, although logically, nothing has changed for them.

How Sonos deals with the implementing of this new decision, welcome as it is, will be another test of whether they have learnt any lessons at all from this fiasco.

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J

jmw_sono

Chromatic Producer I

I recycle 5 Amps this Christmas and now Sonos drops the recycle requirement.

They really know how to make a customer happy, NOT!

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Playbar(2) Sub(1) Play:5(2) Play:3(6) Play:1(5) Connect:AMP(3) Sonos:AMP(5) Move(1)

D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

That’s up to Sonos and how leaden footed Sonos leadership shows itself to be - or not. I am reasonably sure that there is a way for Sonos to undo what they did remotely - bricking. If that be the case, the only ones enraged will be those that tossed their units into landfills either on their own or via a return to Sonos. These folk now have only themselves to blame if they feel hard done by, although logically, nothing has changed for them.

How Sonos deals with the implementing of this new decision, welcome as it is, will be another test of whether they have learnt any lessons at all from this fiasco.

Depends on how they have chosen to brick the devices.

They might have done a complete firmware wipe, which would probably at least require the device to be reprogrammed, using an external programmer interface, probably somewhat like they might do the initial programming.

From what i have heard, Sonos has always had a “disable” feature, so that if a registred owner contacted them and told that their sonos unit had been stolen, they would be able to disable it permanently. If they used this feature it would probably be possible to re-enable the unit if the registered owner got the unit back because the police arrested the thief and found it.

But still….I think the main reason they dont want to re-enable these units is as to not flood the market with old units.

I know of atleast a couple of people that have bought cheap Play-5 that had been disabled, just to have a unit for spares.

If they offered to re-enable these units, then the people who bought them for spares, would get them re-enabled and onto the used unit’s market. This would be bad for future sales.

Also it would further enrage those who sold it for cheap, because it was essentially a brick, and as you see in the comment right above this, it would also enrage the people that took the offer and followed sonos advice to just throw the unit away, because if they had held on to it, they would have been able to re-enable it.

The problem here is that Sonos has made a very bad decision, that landed them in the middle of a field, filled with landmines and no matter which way they decide to go, to try and make people less angry, they will step on a new landmine and, further angering some of their costumers.

The only decision they can really make, that will make people less angry is the “Forget what we said, we will continue to support old and new as best as we can, and we promise that all products will be able to communicate as one system in the future and that base functionality will continue to work across our entire product range”.

I dont think that anyone is expecting that all of the functions, that sometimes need tweaking, will continue to work, but base functionality like multiroom “mp3 from my NAS” will work “forever”.

If they dont opt for that solution i guess that the 33% decrease of sonos stock prices just in the last month, will continue.

Personally the new course here, changes nothing for me, i have one Play 5 that i never intended to trade in, so i am still looking at the “Come May, expect your legacy Play 5 to not work on certain things and because of the Play 5, all of the other “modern” products will also loose those functions”.

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D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

I recycle 5 Amps this Christmas and now Sonos drops the recycle requirement.

They really know how to make a customer happy, NOT!

If you had waited, you could have gotten the 30% AND been able to sell your old amps for a bit of money.

Really seems like Sonos did not analyse their initial decision and is now running around in the forest, blindfolded, trying to escape.

If i had been a major sonos stock holder i would certainly have demanded that sonos got rid of the current management, as they are clearly not very good at reading the market, and if not, i would drop all of my sonos stock faster than a pair of panties in a brothel.

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Smilja

Personally the new course here, changes nothing for me, i have one Play 5 that i never intended to trade in, so i am still looking at the “Come May, expect your legacy Play 5 to not work on certain things and because of the Play 5, all of the other “modern” products will also loose those functions”.

Again, the legacy units aren’t going to stop working on certain things past May; they will proceed to work as they do today, they just won’t get new functionalities. Neither will your modern components if you choose to go the “all system legacy route”, until you ditch the legacy gear.

There will be two options, “all system legacy route” and separating system in legacy and modern – either way, none of these options is going to be “A River Of No Return”. I think this is the biggest fear, that the May update will prove a dead end street for legacy owners.

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»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)

D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

Again, the legacy units aren’t going to stop working on certain things past May; they will proceed to work as they do today, they just won’t get new functionalities. Neither will your modern components if you choose to go the “all system legacy route”, until you ditch the legacy gear.

There will be two options, “all system legacy route” and separating system in legacy and modern – either way, none of these options is going to be “A River Of No Return”. I think this is the biggest fear, that the May update will prove a dead end street for legacy owners.

I know, and i dont expect everything to be updated indefinitily.

I just find it unbelieveable that they can not retain current functionality in the legacy units and do updates in the “modern” units, while stille retaining interoperability.

There is no REAL reason (Other than profit maximizing and plannet obsoletion) that a totally up to date modern product, should not be able to do multiroom MP3 playback from my NAS, in a multi room enviroment, together with a legacy product.

This is ONLY a “Will not”, certainly not a “CAN not”.

The “Every unit needs to be on the same firmware level” is not something that is unavoidable, just something that sonos CHOSE not to do.

If i have modern and legacy products, i would fully understand it if some day, my legacy products would stop being able to do multi room spotify, because spotify changed their stream to a new format that the legacy products did not have processing power to decode.

I have NO respect for the fact that if i want to be able to keep modern and legacy products in the same network, NONE of my speakers would be able to play spotify...Even in a single room setting, because the firmware would not be updated because of the legacy product.

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Smilja

The “Every unit needs to be on the same firmware level” is not something that is unavoidable, just something that sonos CHOSE not to do.

The mode of operation of a multiroom system is a tinsy bit more complex than that of a standalone device. Or have you ever seen a standalone device requested to group and play in perfect sync with itself? I daresay no.

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»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)

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