End of Software Support - Clarifications

I have a customer who has “updated” to S1, they have a couple of legacy Amps. 
 

They have lost access to the music library on the Mac and can’t re add it, I read somewhere that S1 music library is no longer a feature but cannot see any clarification from Sonos. 
 

Is this an issue? 

Not true.  The library should work just as before.  Something else is ar work.

Let me pile on (4,123rd post to this string) probably repeating ad nauseam.  I new this day was coming from the warning emails, but put off running the upgrade numbers until today.  I’ve been a customer since 2005 growing my home Sonos system as my family grew and now into our 3rd home.  And I too have been evangelizing Sonos gear over the years.

Things started to get squirrely with Sonos once they went public and had shareholders to answer to and managing to quarterly expectations rather than building for the long term.  Hell I even own some of Sonos stock - what a lousy investment that’s been - I suppose in line with my investment in Sonos gear - I have to buy 5 Amps, 2 play 5s and a Port just to have part of my system work with the rest of it on S2.  This is well over $3k (including the paltry 30% discount) in addition to the money already spent on the old gear that works just fine on S1 except that I can’t group anything with S2, and have to use two different apps, etc (Arc just came today, so I have to go to S2).  I want to upgrade the obsolete gear, but this is simply UNAFFORDABLE!!!

Like most everyone else, I just feel VIOLATED as a loyal customer.  Sonos could have easily made this right by offering a more fair discount (say like 70% discount) to keep their longstanding customers happy instead of alienating us with this insulting proposition.

My recommendation would be for Sonos to make this right by setting a new upgrade discount (refunding the difference to those who’ve already upgraded).  If management would just do that, I think we’d have a big party in the Community Forum.  Make it right, what do you say Sonos?

As I see it, as long as my legacy system works on a S1 controller that keeps getting security patches, it is not obsolete. And I have no need of any S2 kit in my 5 zone system. So this all irrelevant to me now.

Which isn't to say you also should think the same way, and the answer for you may be a sliding scale of discounts from 30% up, depending on how many products are offered for trade in at the same time. But I think it may be too late in the day for Sonos to switch to something like this, if only because of the complexity of giving refunds to another set of people that will then feel violated.

The problem….For Sonos, is that a LOT of sales comes / came, from current costumers, that expand and renew their system, when old units fail.

By making the new stuff incompatible with S1, and forcing people to stay at S1 if they have but ONE incompatible unit, they are effectively cutting the branch they themselves sit on.

S1 users will feel left out and might not upgrade, because they dont see the logic in throwing away perfectly good speakers, just to buy another similarily looking speaker that, to them seems to have the exact same features.

In the above, i dont consider mixed S1 / S2 as a viable option. This is because this configuration is incompatible with one of sonos’s main selling points, seamless streaming across multiple devices in perfect sync.

So while the costumer might be able to contend with staying at S1 and not being able to buy new sonos gear, i bet sonos is not going to be happy, that they effectively blocked the road for many of its costumers…..Unless they want to take sonos new very expensive toll road, so to speak.

But isn't that what strategy is all about - choosing one path and rejecting another by definition? They are betting on more business via the new toll road and only time will tell whether they made the right call, and whether they will be happy or not. 

There is of course little argument over the view that they handled the communication aspects of the transition, including the trade up thing, very poorly.

In my case, I have never had any interest in any Sonos products for TV and so all the S2 excitement over new products for that domain - Atmos etc etc - leaves me completely unmoved. As does Hi Res audio because I don't think it offers real benefits.

But Sonos has to have felt that they needed to do something more than just incremental stuff to keep differentiating for growth, and there would be market data and research behind their choices. Again, how good is the data/research and then the choices made based on this, only time will tell.  

And for my part, the very situation of there now being lots of equivalent solutions out there that forced them to take steps to differentiate themselves, means that as long as my legacy Sonos hardware works as such, the same equivalent solutions are available to me to use in a world where Sonos is relegated to working as dumb HiFi hardware. So there is little reason for grief where I am concerned. At the end of the day, this is just a home audio system...not some mission critical piece of tech to keep upgrading. All it has to do is what it has done for nine years, which is supply music in the home from ripped CDs and internet services. But Sonos is obviously betting on folks that think like I do to be a small minority of its target market.

I agree, what sonos is doing is twisting the current users arms, hoping they can “force” them into investing even more money into sonos.

I only aquired my first sonos about 5 years ago and already i can see that my Play 5 generation 1 is “obsolete” and the playbar i bought 2 years ago has also been discontinued. I also have play 1’s that are first generation, i admit that i could have gotten second generation ones when i bought the 2 of these, but i dont want speakers with microphones so opted for the first generation ones, that was bought a couple of years ago in a shop.

The real question here is. Has Sonos been misrepresenting their products ?

Until recently sonos had this “Buy sonos, you can upgrade later and everything will work together” vibe.

I dont mind that my “old” speakers will not get some of the features of the new speakers, but that sonos, one day would make it so that a product i bought would not be able to stream simple MP3 audio from my NAS together with an “old” product is baffling.

This is 100% a choice NOT TO support, not a matter og “inability” to support.

To the last part - an argument has raged over this point in the thread and not being in this tech domain, I had nothing to contribute to it. My way to deal with this in future will be to get a non Sonos speaker with line in jacks, and using another Echo Dot wired to those, use the Echo groups feature to have all play together whenever I need grouped play. 

There are, as I said, plenty of cheap ways to bypass Sonos and move on in life!

Kumar Wrote: “And I have no need of any S2 kit in my 5 zone system. So this all irrelevant to me now.”

So you are an example of a potential lost Sonos customer.  You have no intention of purchasing anything that runs only on S2.  I hope that works for you in the future.

For me, it doesnt work as I’m adding a feature TV in my home, and I have chosen to go with the latest technology with the Arc, so this has forced my hand in splitting my system.  Along with me, my wife hates the split system, but she’s already vetoed any thought of paying the money Sonos is asking to replace the old technology.  In some cases I cant even use the same music subscription service on S1 and S2 at the same time - this is just horrible.

lets hope this decision you made will backfire on this company, never buy a single product after this. Customers are not stupid falling for this con. The company deserves go bust.