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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Got this Email from support(not sure what the plan is) :
“We are investigating the issue and we will pass your information on to our engineering teams to investigate further. We will let you know when we have made progress with correcting this issue. As we move forward, we will provide ways to separate your legacy and modern products so that the modern products can still receive updates, and legacy products can still be used.”
I think the serial number is just blocked on the server, when you agree to do the trade-in, so that it will never work on your, or anyone else’s, system. The physical device is not affected, so it Sonos chose to reverse the block, they just have to toggle the server setting. I am sure someone will correct me if I am deluded.
I’ve seen no authoritative description of the ‘bricking’ mechanism, only speculation, but I strongly doubt it’s a server side block.
I asked support if I return my new Move for a refund (it is still in the return / change your mind period) whether they would reactivate the zp100 I traded in against it
“it's not the only ecosystem out there and some existing owners might be considering other options following the new that Sonos will end support for older devices. After all, there's no shortage of alternatives - and the advent of smart speakers and voice control has produced more options when it comes to sending and controlling music wirelessly around your home.”
I think the serial number is just blocked on the server, when you agree to do the trade-in, so that it will never work on your, or anyone else’s, system. The physical device is not affected, so it Sonos chose to reverse the block, they just have to toggle the server setting. I am sure someone will correct me if I am deluded.
If that is the case, really hope for Sonos, that the serial number is burned into some OTP part of the chip and not just programmed into flash at the factory.
Oh and i hope that the mechanism to read the serial from the OTP (If it is OTP) is heavily encrypted.
If not, it would be trivial for a software developer to either reprogram the Serial to another number that is not barred OR make the serial check routine return whatever serial he/she wanted.
I bet that there are a lot of unused serials out there from devices that has gone bad and has been discarded, its just a matter of finding an available one.
OR change the “Check if serial is ok and i can work” routine to point to some rogue server in Russia that will always say “Yes, you are good to go” no matter what serial it sends
Does anybody have an email address to send comments to Ikea? I wonder how they feel about partnering with a company that is bricking equipment in light of its sustainability goals?
Very disappointed with this announcement.
I’m curious about the timing of this announcement. Any decent software \ technology company would give users at least 12 months notice of a product being no longer supported. In this case we have a ridiculously short 4 month’s notice. What is happening in May? Do Sonos have a significant system update that their testing has identified won’t work on the ‘legacy’ items? Or is one of their major music services making changes that won’t work with our older equipment?
Or is this just an attempt to boost trade up sales in this financial quarter??
All may become clear in May. Meanwhile my current thoughts are to continue with my equipment in ‘legacy’ mode, while looking for alternative systems. I’ll not be spending anymore on Sonos equipment. Sad end to a happy relationship!!
I am with you, same plan. I had planned another 3-4 devices this year costing about £1k but no more, will save up for when my legacy equipment fails and then replace with something else, probably stand alone devices as the same is likely to happen with other offerings in this marketplace.
Very disappointing from Sonos.
I was looking at buying a Playbase later this year and 2 x Play:5 to go with my existing 2 x Play:3, 2 x Bridge (effectively obsolete May 2020) and 1 x Connect (effectively obsolete May 2020).
The Sonos kit I have (since 2011) has been brilliant - easily one of the technology best buys in our home in terms of usability, quality and customer support. And it still works brilliantly for what I bought it to do - stream music from local NAS and Spotify. I was looking to expand my Sonos network in 2020, but now I’m being recommended to replace existing, perfectly functional and non-faulty kit, before I can consider extending that network? Madness.
I certainly won’t be buying any new Sonos kit unless there’s a rapid change of policy from the company, which, sadly, I’m not expecting.
Since I received the email 2 days ago re. the May 2020 (effective) de-support, I’ve already started looking into Yamaha Music Cast and I expect this will be the replacement solution for this household. For the money Sonos are asking for their trade-in/up, I can buy a new Yamaha AV amp (driving 15-yo and still fantastic passive Acoustic Energy speakers and a 1-yo XTZ subwoofer), 2 x Yamaha Music Cast speakers (to replace the Play:3s) and have plenty of change left over to buy a Yamaha soundbar (instead of the Playbase). And I will retain all of the functionality I wanted from Sonos.
I have seen Gerald Ratner mentioned a few times on this thread. In terms of customer respect, I have to say it is very apt with regard to this move by Sonos:
If you don’t respect your customers, why should we respect the company?
the biggest kicker here is that if you wish to keep your system as a "whole home" single system - as it was sold, or also now also known as legacy - you won't be able to buy another Sonos product ever again.
At some point, factory bought Sonos units will have software on older than our "frozen" systems and any new hardware just won't work with the legacy stuff. No whole home audio system anymore...
Without any further information that is what these announcements are currently saying.
Or in other words, if you have old kit that works and you don't want to upgrade it you're no longer welcome as a customer!
What utter b......s and abject marketing failure. Kind of reminds me about that Ratners jewelry chap and we all know what happened there!
Good point but the newer hardward could have a legacy mode too. Would be a shitter if they didn’t do this.
BREAKING NEWS:
SONOS WILL OFFICIALLY BECOME A “LEGACY“ COMPANY AND WILL LOSE ALL CUSTOMER SUPPORT AND FUNCTIONALITY BY MAY 2020.
Customers mourn as Legacy Sonos products were rendered useless by company and buried alive.
Not good enough I'm afraid
Not only have you shafted loyal customers, you have also opened up those people buying on the 2nd hand market to fraud. I'm sure there will be many people putting the deactivation on to get a discount then selling the units on.
This has been an absolutely SHOCKING decision, and whoever made it needs to re-evaluate their position within the company quite frankly.
If you don't reverse your stance and offer a lite OS option to continue support for these older devices, sonos will fail as a company. The worst part is you will deserve it.
Does anybody have an email address to send comments to Ikea? I wonder how they feel about partnering with a company that is bricking equipment in light of its sustainability goals?
As IKEA does not make the speakers or the software themselves, i would not risk buying any of their speakers either.
I saw someone on twitter yesterday, ask IKEA if their speakers were also going to be made obsolete and if so, when.
The poor twitter rep, said that “IKEA has no plans to make any of out speakers obsolete anytime”.
But then, that was what sonos said on twitter a couple of months ago as well, so i would not put a dime of trust into such a statement.
It seems that as soon as sales drop, they will just take another of their product out behind the barn and shoot it, to force people to keep buying.
Very sorry to see how stupid decisions kills a great company, there is no shortage of these kinds of stories in history. With new lawsuits with Google, and possibly with Amazon later, this is how you lose respect!
I’ve been a user since 2007, still using a ZP90 and ZP100 with a Play5 and a recently purchased Sonos One this month. I get that legacy players may not have the processor power or memory to handle new functionality. Thats the nature of tech.
I’m not bothered that my legacy players won’t get any new software updates with jazzy new features. What my system does at the moment suits me just fine - playing from my NAS and streaming from Amazon Music and Spotify. If it will continue to work as it currently does then I’m ok with that. But whats not ok is to stop support, threaten the removal of streaming functionality and not allow new players (with their new functionality, services, etc) to co-exist with legacy players.
Like others have said, surely some new bridge type product can be created to send out data to the legacy players. Afterall they’re just speakers that play a digital packet of data !
My main concern, and I apologize if it’s already been asked - how much longer until the sub and playbar are also killed off? I believe they’ve been out since 2012, so can we expect them to disappear in 2022?
@macallan18, our commitment is to support products with software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, and we have a track record of supporting for longer. You can still purchase from us the same Sub and Playbar that were introduced a while back. And even if they do move to legacy at some point in the distance, they’ll continue working as they currently do, but without software updates. Even if software requirements move beyond their hardware capabilites, they’ll keep on playing your TV input until the hardware breaks.
What software capabilities though? What if we don't want them to do anything else? Just continue to work with streaming services?
The point has been made by other contributors about what a really bad decision this is.
My suggestion is that you recruit a focus group from users and ask them to work with a group of your management to work out a revised solution.
Extremely disappointed after hearing the announcement to cut software support.
Not going to spend additional money to replace speakers knowing Sonos will pull the rug and not back its products. Should not matter if the products age
Looks like Sonos will not be able to compete any more and likely go out of business.
Why would anyone spend $400 plus for a speaker or component? Bad business model.
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”.
Real big eye opener and explains pretty well the issues they are facing. But we all agree here that not supporting the older models with new software is fine. Thats life, it happens. What were all “annoyed” about is how it effects our other devices, they shoundnt be penalised/staunted/held hostage. Sonos has clever developers, they just need to find away to allow modern to update, legacy to stay still and basic fucntionality (grouped music) still work. Just have a caveat about newer features not working on legacy devices.
This doesn’t explain why speakers that play music now won’t be able to music in the future. I understand why they won’t have additionally features; but, this doesn’t explain at all why music won’t be able to be played.
Does this explain why you can’t Manage your system anymore on the Windows Desktop App where you have oodles of memory and need a mobile app now and preferred a current version because otherwise basic function are even there disabled ?
I’ve been a user since 2007, still using a ZP90 and ZP100 with a Play5 and a recently purchased Sonos One this month. I get that legacy players may not have the processor power or memory to handle new functionality. Thats the nature of tech.
I’m not bothered that my legacy players won’t get any new software updates with jazzy new features. What my system does at the moment suits me just fine - playing from my NAS and streaming from Amazon Music and Spotify. If it will continue to work as it currently does then I’m ok with that. But whats not ok is to stop support, threaten the removal of streaming functionality and not allow new players (with their new functionality, services, etc) to co-exist with legacy players.
Like others have said, surely some new bridge type product can be created to send out data to the legacy players. Afterall they’re just speakers that play a digital packet of data !
This is exactly what they could do. Or spec newer products to ensure backward compatability via distributed computing.
They decided to smoke crack instead.
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”.
Real big eye opener and explains pretty well the issues they are facing. But we all agree here that not supporting the older models with new software is fine. Thats life, it happens. What were all “annoyed” about is how it effects our other devices, they shoundnt be penalised/staunted/held hostage. Sonos has clever developers, they just need to find away to allow modern to update, legacy to stay still and basic fucntionality (grouped music) still work. Just have a caveat about newer features not working on legacy devices.
This doesn’t explain why speakers that play music now won’t be able to music in the future. I understand why they won’t have additionally features; but, this doesn’t explain at all why music won’t be able to be played.
Their system is designed at present to require all devices to interoperate in several ways (wireless compatibility, sharing the songs library, etc) so they have backed themselves into a technical corner. When one segment of devices can’t “keep up” they have chosen (or forced themselves to choose) to let that device limit what other devices can do.
Of course their solution, rather than do some creative engineering, is to shoot themselves in the foot, which is sad and hopefully they change their mind. A new system architecture, that takes into account varying capabilities without limiting more capable devices because of legacy limitations, would be the responsible corporate thing to do.
I don’t just mean good PR, I mean they boast of their good corporate values and environmental ethos. So, making sure legacy devices are still usable even if functionality on those devices is limited is a much better ethical and environmental solution than their current update&brick approach. That is, it would be a PR win (or at least a step in the right direction) but it would ALSO be a boon to current owners, and to the planet.
Agree ,
In this context their blog about sustainability reads like satire
Like others have said, surely some new bridge type product can be created to send out data to the legacy players. Afterall they’re just speakers that play a digital packet of data !
Well, if they allow legacy and modern to exist as separate networks, isn’t one solution to feed the audio out of a modern connect device to the audio in of a legacy connect or connect:amp (assuming you have both), and use that line-in source within the legacy network? It is quite ironic that the connect is designed to work with legacy audio gear.
I was previously proud to support Sonos and praise its products. I even bought one for my girlfriend. But now it’s obvious they can’t be trusted at all. I wish I’d never bought into them.
They should re-think this policy. It’s a disgrace.
Does anybody have an email address to send comments to Ikea? I wonder how they feel about partnering with a company that is bricking equipment in light of its sustainability goals?
As IKEA does not make the speakers or the software themselves, i would not risk buying any of their speakers either.
I saw someone on twitter yesterday, ask IKEA if their speakers were also going to be made obsolete and if so, when.
The poor twitter rep, said that “IKEA has no plans to make any of out speakers obsolete anytime”.
But then, that was what sonos said on twitter a couple of months ago as well, so i would not put a dime of trust into such a statement.
It seems that as soon as sales drop, they will just take another of their product out behind the barn and shoot it, to force people to keep buying.
I think we can safely say that the IKEA products will not be supported forever - IKEA doesn’t keep any product in the repetoire for long. Their former series of TVs and sound system got four years, then it was the end of those, and most kitchen utilities and other things are replaced on a yearly basis or close to it.
Not sure it makes a difference, but I left a (bad) Google review, related to this news, for the Sonos business office that is local to me in Boston, MA USA. They have several offices around the world… Here are their locations if you want to do the same. Thanks.
