Retired Sonos Staff

End of Software Support - Clarifications

December 8, 2022 at 11:29 AM
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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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J

jkrlu

Lyricist I

Wow! Poor business!! So, those of us who have been long time Sonos users are being punished for being early adopters to the Sonos platform. I am sure we also recommended many of their customers to the Sonos platform. We are now being held hostage by Sonos for more money just to keep our systems operating.

I never wanted to stream music from a service. My entire reason for buying my initial Sonos devices was to play music from my library out any room in my house from my phone, table, or PC.

I was also surprised a couple years ago when I went to play music from my library over my Sonos system and it would not work because I put my internet connection on vacation hold and Sonos could not connect to the internet. Really??

I don’t want to integrate with Siri, Alexa, or any other voice assistant! I did not buy Sonos to have my playlists sent to Sonos for data collection either! I just wanted to have a good speaker I could manage from my phone to ply my music. Boy has this company strayed from where it started!

Very disappointing! I guess I may have a bunch of white paper weights sitting around in the coming year!

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I

iliadz

Lyricist I

The idea that SONOS is anything but against the environment is absurd. The offer to brick devices for upgrades makes NO sense.
I get it that you need to make more money to stay relevant. Don’t do it at the expense of the environment.
ANd now the confusion if we can mix and match. This wasn’t well thought out, but you are for sure upsetting your customer base and getting WAY too much negative press. Re-think this.

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T

Thumbpicker

Enthusiast II

Also if anyone thinks this is about support costs forget it. There’s a third party one man development team that has built a good Sonos user interface on iTunes. A big company like Sonos could easily support them at a minimum cost.

I see this for what it is - a cynical manoeuvre to get new income streams from existing customers. These products aren't smartphones that offer reams of upgraded benefits they are simple media streamers and overpriced ones at that.

Disgusted.

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P

Paul000000

Lyricist III

I had two interesting conversations with the two biggest private audio/video stores in my city.

Both shared the frustrations with Sonos and what is currently going on. Interestingly both shared that dealing with Sonos as a seller is also very frustrating. Sonos pulls moves to take over their customers and deal with them directly after they do ‘in house’ sale. They both expressed that they sell many Sonos units, but if they were gone they wouldn’t miss having to ‘deal’ with them.

Sounds like Sonos is a big dink to everyone.

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melvimbe

Now you have admitted you no longer control some aspects of your own environment - having submitted to the big streaming companies - your value proposition is greatly diminished.

Huh? Did Sonos stated that they are dropping support for legacy products (at least in terms of added features) because of some sort of pressure from big streaming companies?

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Danny

chickentender

Now you have admitted you no longer control some aspects of your own environment - having submitted to the big streaming companies - your value proposition is greatly diminished.

Huh? Did Sonos stated that they are dropping support for legacy products (at least in terms of added features) because of some sort of pressure from big streaming companies?

Is this rhetorical?

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H

HelterSkelter

Enthusiast II

Just had this from Sonos .…

Hello Michael,

My name is Matthew. I'm a supervisor in Sonos Customer Care.

Your entire system will still work after May, it just won't update anymore. As time goes on there may be services that stop working, but you could use your system for years before any of that happens. Legacy and newer products will be able to separate so the newer products can continue to update. I don't know the details of that. There will be more in May.

You don't have to even think about possibly upgrading anything until those older products can no longer do something you need them to do. If a time comes where you do need to upgrade we can talk about discount options. But there is no reason to spend any money while the system is still doing what you need it to do.

Every Sonos device does have a small computer running inside. It is not static AV equipment that never has to update software. Sonos systems have to communicate with each other, other devices on the local network, and 60+ cloud services.

I'm certainly willing to answer any other questions you have about this.

Matthew G

——————-

My response …

Thank you for getting in touch.

I’ve spent thousands on Sonos, and I most definitely will not be upgrading to equipment that I have now found out has a five year life span from the date you chose to stop selling that version.

For me, this was a one time purchase.

Why can you not give us an option to upgrade the motherboard, to one with a larger memory chip and cpu?

That would be an obvious solution instead of bricking expensive equipment.

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melvimbe

Now you have admitted you no longer control some aspects of your own environment - having submitted to the big streaming companies - your value proposition is greatly diminished.

Huh? Did Sonos stated that they are dropping support for legacy products (at least in terms of added features) because of some sort of pressure from big streaming companies?

Is this rhetorical?

No. I have not seen a statement from Sonos stating that they had to drop support in any way because of pressure from big streaming companies.

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Danny

N

Niraj.Shr

Avid Contributor I

Dear Sonos, who is going to protect the rights of customers who are going to purchase used Connect, Connect amps and Play 5 gen 1 on sites like Gumtree, Facebook marketplace, ebay etc now everyone will try to sell them off to unsuspecting buyers??

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Sonos-bulk-10-AMPs-10-Connects/293438373055?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3Df4b65ce1a17b44b19e3105e0097f646e%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D15%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D153805904648%26itm%3D293438373055%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3Ada90dc82-3d86-11ea-a468-74dbd18078ae%7Cparentrq%3Ad032f85d16f0acc6c21083f6ff832642%7Ciid%3A1

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Living room: Playbar | Dining: Play 5 | Bedroom: Sonos One

M

mike_in_md

Contributor I

This is disappointing news. With all this ONLY 5 year guarantee talk I have decided that there are better things to spend my money on and to be honest it isn’t SONOS.

Last week I was planning on purchasing a subwoofer, but I can’t justify that anymore. I have two GEN 1 Play 5’s that I bought only 5 years ago that are no longer going to be supported...that’s a $700 minimum upgrade if I recycle the Gen 1’s.

What about my Play 3’s? Is there going to be an announcement next year that those too will go end of life? I have three of those. What about my two playbars? What about my Subwoofer? Are those going end of life in the next year or two also.

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