End of Software Support - Clarifications

End of Software Support - Clarifications
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R
Userlevel 3
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So the CEO email is simply:

 

patrick.spence@sonos.com 

I just sent the email below.., doubt I will get a reply… but...  

 

Dear Patrick 

 

I have loved Sonos for years. I have loved the equipment, the flexibility and the sound.

 

<<lots of good stuff>>

 

It takes only one decision to destroy a brand’s hard worked for reputation... looks like this is the one for Sonos - unless you retract the May 2020 deadline and work something else out.

 

Bye

 

 

I would add that what is required is clarity - a clear, unambiguous explanation of precisely how things will work after May 2020 based on the CEO statement made yesterday which can be (and has been) interpreted in many ways.

L
Userlevel 2
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Everything seems very confused at present however without a much clearer statement from Sonos than the latest denial of the first announcement I must assume that we won’t be able to use new and legacy products together unless we downgrade the new products to legacy.

I am sure that my ability to stream over Napster or any other provider will not last long after the upgrades stop so the legacy systems will be limited to operating with music held on our own computers or that from our connected Hi-fi systems using connect.

I wonder if any of the other new systems offer a connection to hi-fi amps that might allow streamed music through the Hi-Fi amp and  then on to the Sonos legacy units.

I regard myself as fortunate in that I only have four units probably costing about £1000 of which 50%, my two early connect devices will now be legacy.  As a great advocate of the Sonos system for over ten years I am disappointed.  I don’t think the Sonos brand will survive this.

I propose to move my two non-legacy units to my apartment in France and keep the legacy units in the UK until they are of no value to me at which time I will re-invest in another provider such as Yamaha.

I am following this thread mainly to see which systems other users opt for.

Lord Gnome

 

 

 

 

 

A
Userlevel 3
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 I own Bose speakers from 1987 that still sound amazing over thirty years later.  This announcement is totally beyond the pale.  If your products have a planned shelf-life, that is something that would have been nice to know, I don’t know, seven years ago?

I have a Sonos amp driving 30 year old Bose speakers!

W
Userlevel 5
Badge +2

Well, I can stop crying about my own personal situation as my Connect is listed as a modern product on my account page - thanks to this thread I actually found that page, I didn’t know it existed! I had read articles and assumed (yes, I know!) that all Connects were on the chopping block.

 

BUT, the way they have mishandled this still sucks and I won’t be buying any fresh products that’s for sure! My solution if i were them - replace the affected people’s working items AT COST… not 30% off. It still sucks as people who are currently happy with their setups are still spending money for “nothing” but it would show a much better commitment to product and customer.

 

chickentender

I love my Sonos system, I’ve had it for years and was about to buy an extra unit for my bedroom - not now.

Like a lot of folks on this thread i bought my system as a high end system (which is what it was marketed as) for digitizing my extensive CD collection. I’m not interested in subscription music services and never will be. I want a reliable good quality system to run high quality music from a NAS. I deliberated for a long time and eventually bought Sonos on the recommendations from Sonos community users and never regretted it. Multi-room was a very welcome bonus that i love, dare i say it feels indispensable. However now i’m thinking… why didn’t i bite the bullet and buy a Cyrus!

If i buy relatively expensive audio equipment i don’t expect to get held to hostage after i have purchased the system. I expect it to do what it says on the tin, and what it was promised to do, until it breaks.

I can understand that there may potentially be issues running old sonos kit with new, but i don’t see that they would be insurmountable, and i don’t see why they can’t keep legacy systems so they continue to do what they have been doing for years - it’s a steady state system.

As others have said, it smacks of cynical attempt to drive sales. I fail to see how anyone with a brain cell would think the 30% discount would tempt sonos stalwarts to fork out their hard earned cash to replace legacy hardware… only to face the same situation in 5 years time. Do they really think we are that stupid?

The final straw is Sonos bricking perfectly good hardware - about as un-environmentally friendly as you can get.

It breaks my heart, and will be a pain in the arse for me but i will be switching. I will be doing my homework on network music players (aka CambridgeAudio) and look for separate multi-room solutions.

So congrats Sonos, rather then me spending my money on more Sonos kit, you’ve pushed me into the arms of your rivals.

 

 

 

 

I’d suggest moving on pragmatically like a number here have decided to. No longer recommend Sonos to others. Continue to use your system as a legacy system; if you are not interested in streaming services, you’re unlikely to be affected by using a legacy system in any way. If you’d like to expand your system, don’t buy new product, buy additional used-market units that are also legacy and thus extremely inexpensive comparatively. (Case in point: I just got a gen-1 Play5 for 100 USD following this mess). You (we) ought to be fine for years, provided Sonos doesn’t completely go under - that is the true risk in all of this. But even that is remote; I suspect they’d be acquired by another company before shuttered entirely. At any rate, I’m just going to pay attention to what’s happening, and carry on as usual, not being bothered by missing future software updates (which, to be frank, have offered me nothing in several years, except occasional system instability).

C
Userlevel 4
Badge +2

Dear Mr Spence

Can you please expand on your response to the backlash.  Are you guaranteeing that my old and new SONOS products will continue to work together?  All I want is to use my SONOS system exactly like I did before you changed everything in 2017.  That means:

  • no restrictive login,
  • no monitoring and profiling of my music and radio stations,
  • respect my privacy, and
  • I don’t want or need Alexa.

For the participants on this forum, can I suggest that you go and read SONOS’s privacy policy and then ask why does SONOS need to know what music I am playing, where I am playing it (room and city) and why do you need to share that with everyone?

In 2017 SONOS changed its terms of use, which were forced on us, to allow it to introduce the account login; which as we can all see now is a way of controlling our units. 

The argument that legacy devices do not have enough computing power is not true - it worked perfectly fine prior to 2017 and that’s all I want.  If you strip out all the new “features” added since 2017 then it should work just fine.

By all means fork your user experience into a system with basic features that just works as it did brilliantly prior to 2017 (simple streaming) or the new disposable world with lots of gimmicks.

Agree 100%

Seems it turned partly in a data mining operation.

 

C
Userlevel 5
Badge +3

Sorry, got my figures wrong.  Share price decline since this ill  thought out strategy was announced now stands at around 100 million dollars.

Taking notice yet Sonos?

Q
Userlevel 2

I have been a supporter of Sonos for years and have a pair of 1st gen 5s paired with a sub, a pair of 2nd gen 5s, a connect and a few bridges which I use for ethernet connectivity to other devices and as repeaters. In that time, I have persuaded three friends to kit out their homes with Sonos kit on the back of frequent software updates, ease of use etc. etc.

I am now not looking forward to having to explain to them why you made the earlier announcement and have then changed your mind, at least for now. If you can change your mind once then you can change it again. Needless to say, I will not be recommending your products in future. There's a heck of a lot of reputation damage to be fixed so over to you…..

M
Userlevel 1

What an absolute DISGRACE!

Like thousands of other people I’ve invested heavily in SONOS equipment over the years and have been a massive advocate for how brilliant it is.

I’m APPALLED at this decision AND by the way it’s been communicated.  This is commercial suicide - a ‘how to alienate (and lose!) thousands of loyal customers’ case study for future students, never mind the ‘disposable’ product position you have adopted in an age when environmental concerns are to the fore.

Shame on you, SONOS and SHAME ON CEO PATRICK SPENCE IN PARTICULAR!  Get a grip and REVERSE this crazy decision while you can still salvage at least some respect!  And that means more than just a letter - it means finding a PROPER solution so that £000s of investment by loyal customers is respected and protected, not seen as a route to a forced upgrade programme.

If you fail to take drastic action to restore your reputation, you will pay the commercial price!

Show decisive leadership and ACT NOW!

A
Userlevel 5
Badge +5

Since this announcement a few days ago the share price has dropped 6.5%.

Thats a billion dollars wiped off the company value.  A fair few “trade ups” would need to be sold to recover that.

Hows about just going back to plan A and not treating your existing customer base like a cash cow adn expecting them to just suck it up that their home sound system which has been added to over the years is about to get ripped apart.


Good thing Nicholas Millington, Chief Product Officer, sold 30% of his shares on January 2nd for $500,000.00 before the share price started going down.  Shrewd trader that Nicholas :wink: .

http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001314727/5e4c0a01-abfa-4ea8-bf30-6a97f31fb24d.pdf

Insider trading I think.

A
Userlevel 5
Badge +5

https://www.sonos.com/support/en-us/sonos-user-guide/index.html#t=sonos-user-guide%2Fsonos-user-guide%2Fsonos-user-guide.htm

 

this is what I brought into sonos.

T
Userlevel 3

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

I didn't get the apology email...anyway, let's be clear that now you've cut-out the retailer you offer us a paltry 30% discount on new gear which is less than the retailers margin, meaning more margin and cash for Sonos...shame your customers aren't buying it.  This move is transparent, cynical and smacks of desperation.  I said it yesterday and I'll say it again, you're treating your customers with contempt and destroying goodwill and brand loyalty that took years to nurture.  Business suicide.

D
Userlevel 3

I’m not adding much to the thread as the anger and disappointment by all of us loyal Sonos customers are obvious. But I will add my voice and encourage all of you who read this to leave comments (shame on Sonos for delegating the other thread). 
I have like many here spent thousands. Back of the envelope well north of $5,000.

And I’ve been a huge Sonos advocate, convincing family and friends to check it out, with many of them signing on as they loved the product. And that’s the worst for all of us, the absolute shameless breach of trust. We love the product. Now we have been fooled in a massive way. Never was any word of “your product will one day be obsolete due to software” shown on Sonos ads or web site. Still doesn’t.
But we have all now learned of Sonos view on customer loyalty.
I’m done. Not a cent more for new Sonos products (that we all have to assume will be shelved in a other few years), and beyond that I will be active on the web, on retailer sites, encouraging customers to invite Sonos.

Guessing the new leadership thought they could be like Apple.  They thought wrong. They should think Boing instead, to understand customer reactions when loosing trust. This will be a Harvard Business Review case in a couple of years. A marketing 101 student gets the stupidness of this move.

”It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” W. Buffett
 

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

I’m fed up seeing these stupid moronic quotes by Ryan S and Patrick Spence, that keep popping up - when you’ve got something different, constructive and sensible to say that will actually resolve the crass situation you have created...piss off!

J
Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Waste of time to express my complete distain and feeling of betrayal after spending thousands on what will soon be garbage , but here it is. There’s nothing I can do but to hope the worst for Sonos as it gets pushed out by companies now producing better products at lower prices.

I sincerely hope that your company soon ends up in the same garbage heap as your products.

Shame. shame, shame on you.

L
Userlevel 3
Badge

Since this announcement a few days ago the share price has dropped 6.5%.

Thats a billion dollars wiped off the company value.  A fair few “trade ups” would need to be sold to recover that.

Hows about just going back to plan A and not treating your existing customer base like a cash cow adn expecting them to just suck it up that their home sound system which has been added to over the years is about to get ripped apart.


Good thing Nicholas Millington, Chief Product Officer, sold 30% of his shares on January 2nd for $500,000.00 before the share price started going down.  Shrewd trader that Nicholas :wink: .

http://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001314727/5e4c0a01-abfa-4ea8-bf30-6a97f31fb24d.pdf

It’s probably already been asked, but isn’t that type of activity illegal? Knowing sh1t is about to happen and offloading your stock before the market knows??

Yes, it very much is.  If you are aware of information that is likely to have a significant impact on share price, and act upon that information before it is made public, it is insider trading.  Which is certainly illegal.

So it’s off to NASDAQ authorities then unless he’d like to pay for my upgrades...but that’s blackmail I guess...hmmmm who have I learnt that from??

bonzoWiltsUK
Userlevel 1

Sonos this is very disappointing. I don’t have a huge system but now I’m on a pension I won’t be able to afford to replace it. At least please let us carry on using the ‘legacy’ units to play our music libraries - whatever else, don’t enforce an upgrade which will render the units obsolete.

I don’t worry so much about streaming directly to Sonos as that’s such a volatile area anyway and so long as I can use Sonos to broadcast a line input there are ways round it.

I’ve seen reports that the trade-in offer results in the old units being dumped: this is totally unacceptable.

Unfortunately this type of obsolescence is prevalent these days: I have two tablets around 5 years old which won’t run Sonos software as they can’t be updated to the latest operating system, a 6 year old iMac that now won’t run my tax return software ditto. It would be reasonable to expect at least a 10 year life from consumer durables (or are they now just consumer expensives?) Like many others have commented, I have good quality audio equipment still performing wonderfully after 50+ years.

F
Userlevel 2
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I agree.  The cheapest way of doing whole house audio may just be buying powered ‘dumb’ bluetooth speakers and connecting them to a few echo dots.  $85 gets you a 4 pack of dots.  The dumb speakers will last 50 years.

 

Or just hook up Echo Dots to your Sonos components with a Line in. Then just keep ‘em around in Legacy mode until the hardware dies. Use Sonos as the dumb speakers and Dot as your streaming service provider.

I’m so glad that I bought discounted Chromecast Audios when they were discontinued. I can hook one up to my Play:5 and use that.

 

E
Userlevel 1
Badge

Help me out with this please; I am a software/hardware engineer and a designer of numerous WiFi, Bluetooth and proprietary RF technologies solutions, i have used both open and proprietary platforms to support audio, video, and SCADA signal processing. 

So, my question is: what are you putting on these devices that requires so much more space or functionality; Seriously; you are streaming through either a cell phone, a mobile device (ipad, ipod, etc.) so the majority of the logic is on your audio device and the speaker/amp is the receiver; correct? Does the device collect any information, sound (audio signal processing) or any other measurements that requires the mobile device to receive any data other than streaming data and controlling sound levels to your SONOS Device? 

i find it unfortunate that your technology in these devices is “obsolete” and cannot be used in future roll outs of software. Over the past years i have seen no less than 100 updates; Everytime i use Sonos, i get a “must update software”; what exactly is being updated; the mobile device or the Sonos product or both. Seriously; how much data/control is needed on a device? It is a “streaming Receiver” is it not? Or does it do more signal processing or does the SONOS device collect information via WiFi?

After seeing the notice of “no longer being able to be updated”, i was amazed, frustrated and annoyed. Your CRM is seriously deficient and lacks sensitivity of your customer; we put you where you are and this is the “thanks” we get…

I will “Never” purchase another Sonos product and will seek other products that can be use to stream audio and there are “hundreds” on the market…. For your next generation of  devices; build a “removable” controller that allows people like me to retain their investment without purchasing a short-lived product…

very very unfortunate situation!!!!!

 

 

“What exactly is being updated?”

They are harvesting your data.

R
Userlevel 3
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Another option would be to make the software features modular - so that you choose what “Modules” you want your system to be updated for.  You could make these choices in the “My Sonos” area and then simply have those module updates provided to your equipment.

 

It really isn’t that difficult to come up with creative approaches that would actually please many of your customer base.

P
Userlevel 3
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The SEC has a tip website for insider trading.

M
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

 

down down we go

D
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Confirmation of what we’ve been saying all along.

If you have old and new speakers you cannot group them anymore - so lose the key function of the sonos system.

And what’s worse for Sonos, this will mean that i can not even just stay at the legacy software on all devices and then buy some new device as the new device will be sold with a newer firmware that it is very unlikely sonos will offer to downgrade to the legacy software.

So they have effectively locked the door on the posibility of making money off of new product sales for people that has a legacy system, which seems like a stupid move.

A
Userlevel 3
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 which seems like a stupid move.

I’m just speculating here, but you don’t run a multi million dollar company do you?  Would you like to? :grin:

D
Userlevel 7
Badge +5


Point being, there’ll likely be some poor sods out there, but there’s also now going to be giant opportunity for those that know exactly what they’re getting into.

I dont really need any more play 5’s, but if i did, i would also be thinking about this.

There is also the chance that

  1. Sonos wakes up and realises that what they are doing is suicide
  2. Some independent software person og group is able to take newer firmware and make it fit the 5, thus making it possible to upgrade the whole system while keeping functionality intact between the legacy and non legacy products.

I was in the market for a SUB  and a play 1 for a hobby room, but those purchases has been postsponed indefinitely because of this and i am so happy right now that i did not buy a sub back in november, but opted to wait until after christmas.

L
Userlevel 3
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down down we go

I guess we’ve gotta be careful that they don’t go down the pan because we want a few more years out of our current ‘non-legacy’ kit...chance to save those hard earned pennies for alternative kit...but hey aren’t we all the more savvy for our next tech purchase!
 

 

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