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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Considering Sonos CEO Patrick Spence was bleating about Google’s abuse of power whilst simultaneously actioning an abuse of power on Sonos customers, the words have more than a whiff of hypocrisy about them…
“Sonos CEO Tells House Antitrust Panel Google Abused Power”
“Today’s dominant companies have so much power across such a broad array of markets and continue to leverage that power to expand into new markets that we need to rethink existing laws and policies.”
When you think about it, Sonos was very smart in the way they screwed us all. First they kill the ability to stream from your phone. When everyone gets upset they say, “buy new speakers and you’ll regain functionality for the old speakers.” Everyone goes out and buys some new speakers to keep their old speakers functional, THEN they brick the old stuff anyway. I was hesitant to buy new stuff till their customer service said there was no intention to brick old components. They were saying as recently as the end of November. Fraud anyone?
Stock continues down another 2.5% today.
Just joined to voice my opinion on this “news”.
Having just “joined” the sonos community over the past year; I will likely be exiting quickly.
I have purchased a playbar, two connects, a play 3, and three amps for my house, we like using the system as we have music in every room.
Need the following questions answered:
When you announced the initial trade in offer, you responded that there was no plans to sunset products...clearly misleading consumers...why trust you now? What is the policy going forward?
You announced that there would be a forthcoming price hike to try and get people to take advantage of it; why not announce that products would also be obsolete? If you were going to make a grab for several thousand dollars; do you need the extra $50/unit?
What are the details of the two “networks” for legacy vs new products? Can we still play music across both networks?
Stock continues down another 2.5% today.
Now 2.9% down.
ANNOUNCEMENT
By doing this to long time loyal customers who built up your company :
YOU WILL BECOME A LEGACY COMPANY AND WILL LOSE ALL CUSTOMER SUPPORT AND FUNCTIONALITY.
You lost a long time Sonos customer by failing to adequately support my legacy system and shamelessly and greedily expecting me to replace my whole system that works just fine with a measly crap discount ... a week after raising prices you jerks!
Adios.
.
NEVER by Sonos again
Here is a link to the Sonos Android App - it will be interesting to see the impact of this announcement on reviews
Well its all been said on this thread. What an appalling decision, which amounts to blackmail. I suspect few people will take the upgrade offer, as all trust in this company has now been shattered.. If anyone has e mail addresses for CEO or shareholders etc it may be useful to circulate these so that the pissed off community can make their feelings known directly rather than through the forum where they can be conveniently ignored.
If yesterday is anything to go by, we’ll be getting a forum post from Sonos Ryan in about 40 minutes.
I feel sure he’ll just try and answer a technical post, and ignore the remaining hundreds of disgruntled customers.
I hope I’m wrong though, and that we do actually get some kind of apology and revoke from Sonos.
Scenario… Pretend we are in May 2020 when all this rubbish happens.
I understand that to use legacy and modern together they all need to be the same software version and modern wont get updates.
If I remove my working legacy speakers from my system (turn them off for example). They disapear from the Sonos app etc. My modern system will then be elegable to update and say it does... I then want to use my legacy speakers so I turn them on, what happens? Will I have the option to downgrade my modern speakers to allow them to all work in harmony again? Or is it irrversable?
So I could end up with legacy speakers that can no longer be added?
I’m going to try and sum up my take and avoid complaint-spamming this thread, which some are repeatedly doing in (understandable) outrage.
The issues are:
Lack of notice. Four months is very poor EOL management.
Lack of consistency. Some of the now-"legacy" components are eligible for the 30% trade-up discount, some are not.
Lack of engineering savvy. The "legacy" products work perfectly fine. They would be pro-actively bricked by Sonos if the trade-up offer is accepted, which is wasteful. There also seems to be little thought given to having both dumb and smart speakers on the same Sonos network; Sonos' only solution hinted at so far is that legacy speakers will continue to work, but only on their own all-legacy Sonos network. If connected to "modern" Sonos speakers, the entire system becomes dumb and doesn't receive updates.
And the overarching issue? Lack of customer smarts. There appears to have been no thought given to how customers, who are often evangelists (I was very publicly one of them), would react. And whether they, like I, would start to wonder which next of their expensive Sonos components will abruptly have its EOL declared.
There appears to have been a lot of inside-out thinking at Sonos that didn’t have Sonos taking the customer perspective.
Don’t hold your breath
Why would I paid £500 for a product that will be obsolete in 5 years? #sonostradein70discount
Please explain what you mean when you say that you will support products that you sell for at least 5 years. I bought a CONNECT:AMP in 2018 to add to the 3 CONNECT:AMPS ans 2 CONNECTS that I bought in 2015 (less than 5 years ago - but it will be 5 years in May when you discontinue support). If the one I bought in 2018 is still “Modern”, why aren’t the others?
There were apparently some hardware changes without a corresponding device name change. Sonos realizes this was a very bad idea and probably won’t do it again.
According to my sources the original Connect and Play 5 had 32mb of memory, the connect:amp and play 1 have 64. The newer connect has 256mb as does the Gen 2 play 5. The newest models have 1024mb (1 gig) so it is safe to say that the older models with 64 and 256mb are likely not long for this world. And when 1 gb is not enough, they will get tossed too. This will NEVER end and the cost of ownership it through the roof.
Posted by another forum member (apologies I can’t locate that original post… it’s a swirling vortex of post activity the past 48 hrs.)
Oh how I now wish I’d purchased my Connects just 13 months later.
It’s precisely this kindof chart which would prevent me replacing my Gen 1 Play:5 with a Gen 2 as surely that (and my existing Play:3’s) are going to hit the same issues soon.
Thanks for posting the chart, all. This actually explains pretty well why it is becoming challenging to keep the earlier models working over time when using their existing architecture where every device needs to work at the level of the “lowest capability device”.
The link above shows the first of over 30 reviews I will be leaving on various consumer review websites. Each review I write will be unique so it doesn't throw up any flags with duplicate content with the search engines or websites themselves. If you feel like I do, I suggest you write some honest reviews outside of this website yourself.
In the same way I fully committed to Sonos when I bought 6 of their devices for over £2k, I am now fully committed to telling people how they operate.
While it's great to vent our fury here we are talking to a closed audience, ie just other cheesed off owners, we should be telling non sonos owning people who may be thinking of “investing” in Sonos what will happen.
Never have I been so distrusting of any company or shocked by the immoral, anti-environmental, dirty, money grabbing tactics as I am now with Sonos (even Ryanair comes second place to Sonos)
If the link is removed, here is the text from my review….
“I have been a hifi enthusiast for over 30 years. I finally sacrificed sound quality for convenience and bought 6 pieces of Sonos equipment for plugging into existing legacy Amps and bringing sound to new rooms.
The experience has been painful with intermittent reliability but the main issue is that after spending over £2k ALL of that investment is now obsolete since Sonos have just announced they are withdrawing support for my devices, they offer 30% of the value against new products (yeah right, as if I am going to do that)
Sonos are the only equipment manufacturer I can think of that you buy a product from, then the company decides to effectively destroy it remotely (other than Apple of course). they are effectively hiring the device to you with payment upfront for 5 years. Its a recurring revenue model that is hidden from the consumer.
My Dual, Thorens, Nakamichi, B&W, REL, Denon equipment still works very well, some of it after 35 years and if it needs a new drive belt etc I can buy one for a few pounds or have the equipment repaired, (although I've never had too)
I urge anyone considering buying Sonos to look at alternatives unless they they are prepared for their investment to disappear via a remote update at a random stage in the future. The nagging fear in the back of your mind that would prevent me from enjoying anything whilst I owned it. The fact that a company I once believed in do this deliberately to their early adopters, brand ambassadors leaves me seething.
I will never buy sonos again, I recommend nobody else starts...”
In the very, very, very small chance that someone from Sonos actually reads this I urge you to keep my system working, I don't want new features, I don't want my sonos to boil the kettle, I don't want to talk to my stereo, for it to tell me a joke or the temperature in Jakarta or the next bus to Kings Cross or the significance of the number 42…...I just want it to play spotify and occasionally some radio stations. Comon, how hard is that?
Bluesound multi-room system
Thanks for posting the chart, all. This actually explains pretty well why it is becoming challenging to keep the earlier models working over time when using their existing architecture where every device needs to work at the level of the “lowest capability device”.
I’m not sure anyone has said every device needs to work at the level of the “lowest capability device”? They need to communicate and have compatible software, but that’s not quite the same.
Six (6) Sonos Amps, one (1) Sonos Connect, one (1) Sonos Sub, three (3) Sonos Play 5’s, one (1) Sonos Playbar and one (1) Sonos Boost. That’s the home-wide system I’ve accumulated, piece by piece over several years - the most recent being the Boost. Now I see that you are ‘obseleting’ the large majority of my system which will cost me approximately $5,391 (including your generous 30% discount) before taxes and shipping - just to keep things working? You’d better believe I will be strongly considering *any* other home audio options before I spend another cent with Sonos. You have trashed this customer’s goodwill overnight.
BTW - how long ‘till you close this thread because you don’t want to see all the customer complaints???
Well, no matter the outcome from this I will be selling all my Sonos.
I did not realize how much control this company holds over its dealers and customers.
Its ‘just’ a home stereo. I too will loose money and it annoys me to no end that I can’t resell some of this stuff, but other choices are easy now a days.
Disappointed the stocks are not be affected more than they are.
The email I received from Sonos the other day was like a kick in the gut. I learned that I would have to spend $628 to replace two connects that are working fine. I have spent a lot of money on Sonos products and expect them to last for more than five years. It is ironic that one of my connects are connected to a stereo that is almost thirty years old that is definitely not obsolete. At the minimum Sonos should be replacing these units at cost and not making a profit off of this.
