Sonos CEO steps down after app update debacle
516 comments
·January 13, 2025crooked-v
It's less the app, more the business decision to tell people who had spent thousands and thousands of dollars on elaborate sound systems to go throw it all in the trash and start over, all at once.
Even Apple has never been that bad. They drop support for things over time but even their roughest transitions (x86, Apple Silicon) have come with extensive day 1 support for previous functionality.
schappim
> throw it all in the trash and start over
People will think what you’re saying is hyperbole; however, I was on a walk with the family, and I saw a Sonos speaker in the trash. It looked like new and a fairly recent model. I lugged it home, and it was a $US500 Sonos Play:5 speaker system [1].
Once home, I plugged it in, and it powered up.
I tried to pair it with my iPhone using the new Sonos app, and it didn’t work (the app never found the speaker).
I then tried the same again using my development Android device, and it instantly worked!
Once it was set up with the Android app, I could access it via the iPhone version of the app.
I can only imagine some iPhone owner literally threw it in the trash because he couldn’t get the iOS app to work. Bonkers…
[1] https://files.littlebird.com.au/pb-BfEVPbWlDe-hkxfK0.png
dmazzoni
I have some old Sonos speakers that have been gathering dust for a while.
I decided to sell them because they still have some value but I don't really want them, especially with what the company has done recently.
However, I wanted to set them up again to make sure they work. I spent hours trying to get them to set up again with no luck. I'm sure this is exactly what other users are experiencing. The old app was so nice and reliable. I don't have an opinion on the new app because I just literally can't get it to connect.
And I know they're not dead. One has an audio-in jack and still plays. It works great. There's no reason any of them shouldn't be fine. The only thing that changed was the app. I just want to get them set up so I can sell them on Marketplace for a good price as fully working.
jwr
Old Sonos hardware works great with Roon.
I am very annoyed at the planned obsolescence that Sonos has been pushing for a while now. I stopped buying new Sonos hardware, I'm still using all my old hardware, just not with the terrible Sonos apps, but with Roon.
I also took to aggressively repairing very old hardware that was actually failing (ZP80 players), because of the Sonos planned obsolescence policy. Recapping the PSU did the job, and I intend to keep them going for as long as I possibly can.
CamelCaseName
It's insane to think of the collective number of hours wasted on this.
Yet people will still buy Sonos!
aksss
EEVBlog had a video about mod'ing a dumpster-found Sonos Play 5 into a cloud-free working system.
EDIT: Whoops, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeIk-4ItQ70
They (Sonos) basically willfully attempted to brick their consumer devices, and since many sonos customers were prosumer enthusiasts but not technical (hw or sw) it really did signal EOL for the products. Bananas. I still have a my Play1/3/5 infrastructure operating through Home Assistant and AirBridge that turns them into Airplay devices. It's not perfect but still gives them utility. Considering how much they f'n cost..
schappim
Perfect! It turns out this was a Sonos Play 5 too[1], although mine is seems to be a newer Model S100!
Funnily enough, I own an electronics company and Dave is just down the road :-)
[1] https://files.littlebird.com.au/pb-BfEVPbWlDe-hkxfK0.png
petepete
Funnily enough I bought a Sub Mini last year and had to borrow an iPad to add it to my system because it failed on Android, even when being walked through the process by someone from Sonos support.
exadeci
That's not the app change you think it's.
The app update they're talking about is the one that got released last year which is terrible, it keeps crashing, doesn't work with time zone and a bunch of other stuff
isatty
At the risk of defending a megacorp: Apple has always been great about supporting their devices for a long time.
tacker2000
Why is apple always brought up even though they have nothing to do with the topic on hand, and speakers and iphones/laptops are obviously quite different products?
HanClinto
It boggles my mind that I'm not able to download the oldest released version of software that was compatible with my old version of iOS.
My iPad is too old to upgrade to the new OS, but yet no software is available for it in the store, because all new apps are encouraged to be re-released for the newest version of the OS.
My device is completely frozen in time from whatever software was installed on it when it went out of support.
Ntrails
I have an old iphone somewhere and I also experienced this frustration. I appreciate you're not compatible with my ios - so give me the one that was. I don't care about whatever features you've added
However, I do suspect app developers don't want to be on the hook for supporting old versions, should they continue to serve things in need of security fixes etc etc. I don't entirely attribute it to malice.
philistine
What are you talking about? You can absolutely download the last compatible version of an app:
https://appleinsider.com/inside/ios/tips/how-to-get-apps-for...
troad
By phone standards, yes. By computer standards, absolutely not.
cocacola1
I dunno, I ran my mid-2012 MBP until ~October 2021. In that time, I got it serviced once for a screen issue that they fixed under some program (after the warranty period). I think it got security patches as recently as then. That seemed like a solid run to me.
adamors
What are computer standards actually? I have two macbook pros from 2015 running still, perfectly fine for regular "computer" usage (non-development).
msoad
Not sure why you say this. I know multiple 10+ yo MacBooks still operation.
coro_1
Usually yeah. Though it sure appears that a lot of apps requiring a recent iOS lately don't need too. It's curious where that push is coming from, if they're all individual company choices, made at once, for the first time ever.
rogerrogerr
It’s relatively easy to justify supporting only one or two major versions back if you’re writing an iOS app. There are stats out there on how many active devices are on what version, it’s pretty striking. Especially compared to Android.
NoPicklez
That sounds a bit over the top
I have two Play 5's that I have had for a decade and they're still currently set up working completely fine on an Apple device. That's a speaker that was released 16 years ago and still works through the Sonos app, still allows me to play Spotify, still works natively with the Playbar to watch movies and TV.
That sounds pretty good to me. If people want to throw out their hardware and buy new that's fine, but they haven't needed to throw out their Play 5's.
If I was still using an Apple iPhone from 2009 you can bet it would be a terrible experience
mrWiz
There was a time when Sonos really tried to EOL "Gen 1" devices, including the Play 5. There was such a backlash that they backpedaled a bit, but Gen 1 devices lost the ability to interact with Gen 2 and later devices and you need to use a different app for them.
NoPicklez
Gen 1 devices included among their product line was really only the Play 5 (Gen 1).
Every other device, Play 1, Play 5 (Gen 2), AMP, Play 3, Playbar, Playbase, Sub all of these products were made compatible with both S1 & S2 apps.
Outside of the Play 5 (Gen 1) there weren't really many other products people were buying that were left out.
pcchristie
Kind of dishonest to compare a speaker to an iPhone isn't it?
Closi
> It's less the app, more the business decision to tell people who had spent thousands and thousands of dollars on elaborate sound systems to go throw it all in the trash and start over, all at once.
As a Sonos purchaser, ironically product longevity was the reason I bought so much of their stuff!
While other similar systems would drop support for old devices eventually, I could be confident with Sonos that I was investing in stuff that would continue to work.
… until now! I’ve started to lose confidence. Which is a shame - I’m moving into a new house and wanting a sub, but now questioning if that’s a sensible decision given I don’t know how long my older speakers will work for now they are going glitchy. Real shame!
ssl-3
2 out of 3 of my Sonos devices were rendered useless by their policies. One day they were functional and working, and the next day they were not. One of these was a fancy, very expensive jog-wheel remote that I rather liked (every one of these in use all got absolutely bricked, deliberately, in a bullshit move), and the other was a Sonos Bridge (a wireless access point) that they didn't deem worthy of working with new software (even though that was also bullshit).
The remaining device has mechanical issues (as old speakers sometimes do). This one is disappointing, but at least it isn't irrational.
flybrand
we moved into a home that had wired speakers installed in every room all to a central Sonos enabled device - it is all old. It worked perfectly until this.
Funny thing is, we thought it was silly when we moved in - then we grew to love it. Now I hate them!
matwood
> It's less the app, more the business decision
I like to reverse decisions further back. The connected speaker is basically a commodity at this point. Sonos does have some nice features, but they are very expensive. I think the ceo saw the down sales and lack of new products and rushed out the app hoping it would work and boost sales. Obviously it was a disaster, but I’m not sure if sticking to the status quo would have led to any different outcome in sales.
philjohn
If this is the thing YEARS ago, they backtracked and they still work via the S1 app.
dguido
Please stop putting salespeople in charge of highly technical product companies like Sonos. I'm so glad that Tom Conrad is an engineer by training. I hope he can turn this mess around.
The key technical change that broke Sonos was abandoning their reliable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) system for device discovery in favor of mDNS, while also shifting from direct device communication to a cloud-based API approach. This new architecture made all network traffic encrypted and routed through Sonos cloud servers (even for local operations), adding significant overhead and latency, especially for older Sonos devices with limited processing power. They also switched from native platform-specific UX frameworks to a JavaScript-based interface while moving music service interactions through their cloud instead of direct SMAPI calls, resulting in slower performance and reduced functionality.
For a more extended discussion, see this excellent LinkedIn post from Andy Pennell, a principal engineer at Microsoft with a deep technical understanding of Sonos systems. He created one of the most successful third-party Sonos apps for Windows Phone and worked directly with Sonos on their official Windows Phone 8 app.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...
jedberg
I don't think having a sales person in charge was the problem.
The problem is the fundamental disconnect between what's good for users and what's good for the company. The company wants you to have to pay them money every month and control how you interact with the product, so that they can be a services company with recurring revenue.
The consumer wants a device that they buy once and it just works.
griomnib
I have experienced this most acutely with the most recent round of macOS and iOS updates.
Nothing Apple is shipping seems to be for me, the user. Rather it’s a grab bag of crap “AI” for Wall Street, ways to make it harder to run software of my choosing, and wholesale trashing of perfectly fine UX to cram in whatever useless feature some PM landed for their promotion.
I could say a few hundred things much worse about the direction of windows 11, which is even more obnoxious than Apple, but then I’d have to relieve the horror of being forced to submit my email address to Microsoft to install the damn OS.
Day by day I feel the devices I’ve spent a huge sum of money on no longer belong to me. I’m getting really fucking tired of it, and something has to give.
4ggr0
> but then I’d have to relieve the horror of being forced to submit my email address to Microsoft to install the damn OS.
all it takes to install Windows 11 without an account is to press SHIFT + F10 on the "Connect your internet"-screen and execute this command: OOBE\BYPASSNRO
never in my life have i linked an MS-Account to my personal windows, i always use a local account.
scarface_74
If you turn Apple Intelligence off, how is the UI in iOS 18 any different than the previous version?
conradfr
> and something has to give
Well yes, the user.
btreecat
Sounds like your ready for some flavor of Linux
jimt1234
> Nothing [insert company] is shipping seems to be for me, the user.
I have a 90/10 rule when it comes to new products/features these days: they're 90% benefit to the company and 10% benefit to me.
redeux
It's called enshittification, and it's pervasive throughout our entire economy.
astrange
Apple doesn't have PMs.
mrandish
> The company wants you to have to pay them money every month and control how you interact with the product, so that they can be a services company with recurring revenue.
Yes! This pervasive trend has nerfed so much consumer tech. I simply won't buy any more hardware that relies on proprietary clouds
danielmarkbruce
> The problem is the fundamental disconnect between what's good for users and what's good for the company
The fundamental problem with 95% of companies, and 99% of publicly listed companies.
BrenBarn
At that point it's really a fundamental problem with our society that allows and even incentivizes the growth of such companies.
Earw0rm
That suggests it's perhaps about what's good for investors, not what's good for companies themselves.
gadders
It's 100% of PE-owned companies.
benreesman
I haven’t owned Sonos gear in a long time, but certainly back in the day they had just amazing products. That SUB where it was so perfectly balanced? They did a demo (that you could easily reproduce at home) where you could have it driving “call the cops” noise disturbance bass without upsetting a nickel set lengthwise on top, just a great unit and not the only one. Awesome stuff.
But while superior products at a price point can capture a bunch of share, after that they grow at the rate of the market. Those markets have “matured”.
For whatever reason we don’t as a society let “tech” markets mature. We demand growth long after everyone is satisfied.
This is where ideas like “growth” and ideas like “useful” diverge: raise your hand if you like Facebook or Google in 2025 more than 10-15 years ago.
Sonos (and I’m aware of the structure) “grew” right out of a sustainably profitable business with happy customers.
vachina
It’s a company that makes speakers. Unbelievable that it can have such value to be able to be listed on NASDAQ.
My Google Home costs $30 second hand, don’t sound as good, but I’ve not spent a single cent on it after setting it up. What is SONOS doing?
Earw0rm
Amen.
Newlaptop
> For whatever reason we don’t as a society let “tech” markets mature. We demand growth long after everyone is satisfied.
The reason is tax law and it applies to all companies not just tech. Removing the double-taxation of dividends would fix so much of our economy.
If you run a stable, no-growth but profitable company, and each year return the profits to the owners (shareholders) in the form of a dividend, that's bad because the income is first taxed when the corporation declares it as income and then again when the shareholders receive the dividend.
If instead you don't issue the dividend, but re-invest to grow the company, then the value of the shares can increase without creating a taxable event for the shareholders.
We could avoid a lot of the boom-bust cycles, enshittification of products and other economic problems if we just structured tax law to encourage stable, profitable companies issuing boring predictable dividends instead of our current system that requires infinite growth.
lotsofpulp
> For whatever reason we don’t as a society let “tech” markets mature. We demand growth long after everyone is satisfied.
That reason is people like more money than less money. No one logs into their brokerage account and invests in Sonos because they have a great product that is growing (or shrinking) at the rate of the speaker market.
People want to see their year end report at least equal the broad market returns.
The directive for all business leaders is to hit those benchmark returns, not pump out a solid speaker for however many years.
And if a private business owner operates their company in a way that lags the market’s returns, then they are basically doing charity work. They’re going to have to pay a lot of cash compared to their competitors who can use RSUs to incentivize employees.
alkonaut
But Sonos doesn't sell any services/subscriptions, just products, correct? So even if they wanted to have recurring revenue how would they do it? They sell gadgets?
wiether
They sell "Sonos Radio HD", a subscription based radio service which is supposed to be an upgrade from their free offering.
But as much as I dislike the "new" app, it doesn't push subscribing to this service, so I'm not sure they absolutely want device customers to become subscribers.
mixermachine
...so far, yes. But somebody has to pay all of that new network traffic and cpu cycles ;).
givemeethekeys
Bait and switch is the fundamental problem. Abuse of power.
atoav
As a music fan one would think I'd be their target group. But I haven't even considered their product and classified it as "some smart crap that is an excuse to syphon data out and lock me in". So all stick, no carrot.
Nursie
It never really was that at the beginning. It was a good, locally-controlled system which would build itself a wifi mesh (back when that was unheard of) be configured to pick up things like samba/cifs shares and play your library, with some really neat features like combining speakers into stereo pairs or surround systems, and then playing your music and any input devices arbitrarily across these zones you have set up.
At some point they integrated spotify and other similar services, which risked what you talked about, but was fine. There are even third party controller frontends available on linux.
But recently (mid 2024) they delivered an absolute stinker of a new app which routes everything via their cloud, fails to load half the time, barely responds, and looks suspiciously like that grab for control you imagine
nelox
Agree. Just ask Steve Jobs.
mananaysiempre
> abandoning their reliable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) system for device discovery in favor of mDNS
I don’t know about that part. UPnP is exactly the HTTP-abusing XML-laden layer-spanning horrorshow you expect from 2000s Microsoft where it was mainly supported, mDNS is a fairly compact and neat set of independent extensions to preexisting Internet protocols born during Apple’s short period of flirting with open standards. In a greenfield project, you’d need to show me some really impressive tooling to make me choose UPnP, because five minutes with the specs are enough to tell implementing or debugging the thing is going to be a nightmare.
(No experience with Sonos or their implementation of either.)
stephen_g
I had the same reaction, all the other parts of the parent comment sound bad but switching to mDNS seems like the one that should have been an improvement or at least neutral...
packetlost
I'll second this. UPnP is wisely considered a bad idea and a security liability. mDNS usually just works and has been the foundation for several successful consumer platforms including Chromecast
eddythompson80
I'm guessing people commenting on UPnP vs mDNS implementation are mostly referencing this post https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...
But it wasn't just a move from UPnP to mDNS with everything else remaining the same. They also moved to HTTP/WebSocket instead of UPnP eventing, added encryption.
While most complaints in this thread about the app all say "it's sluggish", with the initial release of S2 many had their systems that worked perfectly fine with S1 undiscoverable with S2. At the time all the advice on Sonos forums, Reddit, etc was "First check your router and make sure mDNS isn't disabled". Which caused a lot of people to have a kneejerk reaction of "wtf is this mDNS shit and what was wrong with the "old reliable UPnP"
jauntywundrkind
HTTP/WebSocket relies on a stateful connection! Man that strikes me as so not smart!
Comedically, UPnP was also HTTP, but not as stateful as websockets. Often httpu, http over UDP. And for service discovery, httpu over multicast, pretty much like mdns. I'm surprised that s2 would have broken, given that I'd expect s1 to also need multicast. Maybe Sonos setup a pinhole router via upnp-igd, so devices could talk to each other inside the network, even if multicast was off? It's be interesting to know if any upnp-igd rules were created in s1.
spamizbad
Ditching a native framework for something JS-powered and running everything thru a cloud server sounds like technical decisions willfully made by engineering leaders.
sgarland
Probably egged on by people telling them they had a much larger hiring pool if they went with JS (which is almost certainly true).
Just once, I’d like to see a leader actively refuse these kinds of arguments when the process they have is objectively better.
Never once have I ever experienced an Electron-ified version of an app and thought, “oh yeah, this is better.”
nox101
I have, it's called Visual Studio Code and I ditched my old native editor(s) for it.
I'd even suggest that the fact that it's JS based has significantly changed the tech world because the editor itself will run in a browser so it's here https://godbolt.org/ , and here https://codesandbox.io, and here https://www.postman.com/, and here https://aws.amazon.com/pm/cloud9/ and 100s or 1000s of other sites.
egorfine
As much as I hate Electron apps, I have to admit that there are incredibly, unbelievably well done apps created with it.
VS Code and 1Password 8 do come to mind. Blazingly fast. Low memory footprint. Incredibly reliable.
asdvasdascac
> Probably egged on by people telling them they had a much larger hiring pool if they went with JS (which is almost certainly true).
There are many VC funded companies here. How many of you felt pressured to pick a hireable language like JS/Python because if not you couldn't deploy your investor's capital? Like, if you had presented a plan of "I'm going to need 4 graybeards that know Haskell", you'd get denied for not thinking big enough.
dmazzoni
That's an example of something that can be done well or done poorly.
AirBnB, UberEats and Facebook are all built with React Native and they have excellent performance.
Using a JS framework for your UI doesn't inherently mean it will suck. It can be done well.
If you expect it to be half as much work, you'll be disappointed.
If you expect it to be a tradeoff that makes some things easier and some things harder, and you're willing to invest in making it excellent, then it can be a very reasonable choice.
scarface_74
> AirBnB, UberEats and Facebook are all built with React Native and they have excellent performance.
https://getmcss.com/press/facebook-exits-react-native
> Performance issues: React Native apps are known to have slower performance compared to natively built apps, which can be a drawback for users.
Airbnb has dropped React Native.
umanwizard
At least on iOS, the Facebook app is not and has never been built with RN. Some features were, but none of the core ones like News Feed. The biggest example of an RN-based feature is Marketplace.
stuff4ben
It's not like the salesy-CEO was writing the code, there was still a bunch of engineers who said "hey this sounds like a great idea". Personally I want my CEOs to be on the sales side, make more money for the company. That being said you best have a good CTO/CIO that aren't sales-oriented.
magicalhippo
Our company makes B2B for a rather technical niche.
We got a sales-oriented CEO who knows when to listen to us developers. It has worked very well for our company.
Being more sales-oriented he's found good business models and knows our customers well, and hence what our products are worth to our clients so we're not selling our products too cheap. This was the case before he took over from a more technical CEO.
While a CEO with an engineer background can certainly do well too, I think it's probably easier to find a good sales-based CEO that simply knows when to listen to their technical team. At least in theory...
rachofsunshine
One imagines a lot of the engineers going "yay!" are just people who want to have a job tomorrow.
null
bigfatkitten
This architecture sounds like a profound engineering failure, not a sales problem. The sort of failure that should get engineering leaders fired.
x0x0
Hard to say. I'd bet there was a decent chance the eng team stridently warned the execs about what would happen and got overruled.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/it-was-the-wrong-dec...
In particular
> Employees claimed that Sonos’ desire to get new customers and please investors was becoming more important than ensuring that old hardware would work properly with the new app.
That sure sounds like this was a deliberate choice.
That said, I suspect Sonos' market has mostly disappeared. A decade ago I paid $400+ to get streaming audio; now a lot of people are happy with Spotify Connect and $200 google speakers or a $50 refurb echo 4.
bigfatkitten
It sounds like a secondary effect. They made a whole ton of really bad design decisions that ruined the product for current hardware, with breaking compatibility with existing kit being icing on the cake.
Nursie
If the software wasn't a shitshow, they compete in that bracket now via the Ikea Symfonisk range.
They just really need to sort out the damn software.
nl
The new mDNS discovery mechanism works much better for me than the old one. I had two speakers that would constantly require reboots to be discovered with the old version but now they are 100% available.
raffraffraff
Nice article by Andy. It's astonishing that they released that magnitude of change, and that they didn't provide a way to roll back once it showed itself to be a car crash. It should have been an opt-in beta, then opt-out, and maybe then after the bugs are squashed, incrementally rolled out.
I understand why they'd to remove this big clatter of legacy protocols, simplify it, and encrypted everything. A tech-focused CEO would surely want that too, but perhaps might respect the amount of work and testing involved. What they forgot is that in a Sonos is a clatter of legacy protocols on top of speakers that are sonically "ok". Wasn't that their unique selling point? Why wouldn't a CEO with a sales background understand USP?
As someone pointed out: they want to turn once-off purchases into monthly subscription. Maybe. They see this enormous userbase and brainstorm ways to squeeze recurring revenue out of it, but ironically they ruin the product and turn an army of advocates into enemies.
insane_dreamer
Those would have been CTO decisions or at least recommendations as to the technical merits of the change, not the fault of the CEO.
Now if the CEO made the change for other reasons (usually financial, such as customer subscription lock-in) despite the technical downsides (which should have been presented by the CTO), then yes, in that case the blame would primarily fall to the CEO.
hbarka
My Sonos app experience is probably the worst of any smart devices I’ve owned. Dropped connections, unable to connect or stream, just all-around inconsistencies. Great speaker when it’s hardwired but the “smart” app is bad. Why did it take years for the chickens to come home to roost?
notatoad
>Why did it take years for the chickens to come home to roost?
because the problem with sonos is that they're actually really really good. dollar for dollar, it's some of the best sound quality you can find for home audio, and it doesn't require a month of product research to figure it out. it's easily available in most big-box stores, and unlike some other brands they don't have a shit-tier line of products that look indistinguishable from their good stuff so you have to be cautious as a consumer to buy only the good stuff. if you go to best buy and spend $500 on sonos products, you're going to get your moneys worth.
it's too bad their app sucks, because their hardware doesn't.
omnimus
I dont think this is true. I am no audiophile but Sonos is actually quite expensive vs getting some streamer like Wiim with basic cheap amp and any solid speaker brand - KEF, Elac, Klipsh, Polk…
I know its some choices but any of them are good choice its mostly flavours. What you get for same money will sound better and 100% last longer because you have modular system instead of glued box that stops working when Sonos stops caring about the product (like they did before).
notatoad
yeah, so you've gone from walking in to a store and coming out with a single box that you can plug in to power and connect to wifi and get music on, to decision on what amp to buy, and a decision on which of the hundred nearly identical bookshelf speakers to get, a question on whether your amp will drive those speakers. and then you've got to find a store to actually sell you all that stuff. it's an entirely different market from what sonos is providing to customers.
fwiw i did exactly what you're suggesting for my personal use, i've got a wiim pro and a fosi v3 and kanto 5" speakers and i'm very happy with my setup. but i'm a nerd who likes shopping for things like that, and i know enough to know that most people would rather not. and it's not like i saved anything compared to going with a sonos.
edit: and, as i just learned a little further down the thread, you've also got to be careful which model of wiim you buy - the newest and nicest ones don't have airplay.
okdood64
> I am no audiophile but Sonos is actually quite expensive vs getting some streamer like Wiim with basic cheap amp and any solid speaker brand - KEF, Elac, Klipsh, Polk…
The whole point is Sonos is easy. One product for speakers. Another one for a sub (which most people don't even need). Ok now you're done. And then there's people who really don't have space for all that.
null
dmazzoni
They're not the only good speakers these days, though.'
When they came out, there was nothing else that had their combination of sound quality and app features.
Before their new app, the competition had basically caught up, Sonos was only marginally better in a few ways.
With their new app, I'd never recommend Sonos.
hijklmnopq
Who actually uses the app? I only used it for setup. My Era 300 works great and ive never touched the app.
Also what brands make speakers that sound just as good for the price and simplicity of setup? Asking legitimately not a jab.
ryanianian
FWIW there are several third-party mobile applications that work just fine to operate Sonos equipment.
The speakers expose a few SOAP-based APIs to any clients on the LAN. Those allow for track control, grouping, etc. They don't allow adding new music services, but they can do the vast majority of daily interaction. These APIs continue to work nearly flawlessly even for my Play:1 devices that are 10 years old.
Streaming via AirPlay is indeed hit-or-miss, but it hasn't gotten worse in the past couple years.
I control my Sonos from a jQuery-based web application I wrote nearly 10 years ago that runs on a raspberry pi in my closet. I have not had to change anything in several years, and I use my 15+device Sonos system all the time.
The new app is indeed a dumpster fire. Somehow the company managed to make their first-party application worse than any of the third-party applications.
mandibles
Any links to good third-party apps?
fidotron
I've been using Sonophone on iOS since all this kicked off. Not great, but it works. (For me Sonos breaking NAS media server support was killer, and Sonophone can handle it).
Had this not happened sledgehammers would have been going through speakers.
I would still prefer they rolled back to the old app, or made it as an optional re-release.
aksss
If you run Home Assistant already, there are some good Sonos solutions in there.
The actual Sonos integration still works (IIRC) with most of my speakers, in that I can use them as targets in automations involving audio (sees them on network and integrates directly).
The AirSonos add-in makes the Gen1 devices show up on your network as AirPlay targets. IME, AirSonos can be a little buggy since you're going through a bridge but not enough to really matter. It's functional value far exceeds the frustration (90% of the time it works 100% of the time).
With all this, you might be stuck with the old room names set when you had access to the Sonos native app. I think AirSonos lets me mask those names, but every now and then I have to remember that, oh yeah, the Play3 labeled Kitchen is actually now actually bedroomxyz. But again, it works for all intents and purposes. I can airplay from sonos, audible, etc to my gen1 sonos equipment, and that's waaaay better than tossing them into a chinese river (recycling) or a local landfill.
The EEVBlog video about the "Fronos" project (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeIk-4ItQ70) involved embedding a new amp with bluetooth into the Play:5 chasis, and there are certainly amps these days you could consider that have built-in airplay. Something for the project queue. For me, using the above with Home Assistant keeps this project at the bottom of the queue, though it's probably the "right" solution long term.
yurishimo
Well, it didn’t used to be bad. OG Sonos was awesome. If the ceo kept leading investors on with “just one more quarter/we are almost ready to launch the big fixes/etc” then I can understand why it took so long. AFAIK this is the first ceo that Sonos has ever ousted so I think it’s a pretty big deal.
Hoping the new one will have more foresight to not screw over existing customers in the face of the new shiny.
In other news, I hear Framework is looking to get into other hardware niches… if they ever made a networked speaker, I’d buy it.
sergiotapia
I wonder how much of that is Sonos sucking vs bluetooth just being an absolutely terrible connection protocol. it's always a raindance prayer that bluetooth will work, even harder to have it pair. bluetooth makes printers seem like NASA level quality software.
Darkskiez
Only the newest sonos speakers have bluetooth, the problems with Sonos are nothing to do with it. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn... has a good write up.
feyman_r
Most of my Sonos speakers and soundbars worked before the app update and right after, all that became unreliable, across devices.
I’d say that leads me to believe it’s an app issue versus just Bluetooth. Agree that BT by itself has a reputation to match, but in this case Sonos is to blame. The other apps recommended in the post work well.
jgrowl
> The company said it would cost between $20 million and $30 million to fix these issues and decided to cut about 6% of its staff.
> Spence, in October, had acknowledged mistakes surrounding the app's release and said that he and seven other company leaders would forgo their bonuses.
People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses.
> Spence, whose total compensation was $5.19 million in fiscal 2023, took a roughly $72,000 cash bonus.
x0x0
> People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses.
Well, the board seems to have fired him too?
soperj
are you really fired when you get nearly $2 million in severance?
saaaaaam
$2 million plus his unvested shares. Plus the millions he’s made over his time as CEO. I reckon he will be just fine.
elp
For a CEO of a public company this is about as close to a perp walk with your stuff in a cardboard box as it gets.
null
acchow
> He’ll remain an adviser to the Sonos board through June and get paid $7,500 per month until then. He’ll be paid a cash severance of about $1.9 million, and his unvested shares in Sonos will vest.
Incredible vesting schedule
Ringz
I, like an idiot, sold my Onkyo Integra amplifier, radio tuner, tape deck, Canton and KEF speakers for next to nothing and switched to Sonos. I deeply regret it. In my kitchen, there’s an old Grundig radio and a Sonos speaker. Guess which one gets turned on in the morning and evening during meals?
matwood
I’m old so maybe that’s why I never understood the Sonos fascination. Sonos was also crazy expensive for what it was. Around covid I sold my almost 20 year old floor standing Paradigms and bought some KEFs because I needed something smaller. I glanced at Sonos, but thought no way do those sound as good or last 20 years.
Nursie
Go back 13 or so years when I bought in -
Speakers with decent sound (sure, your separates system is going to sound better, but pretty decent). They have some really fancy wireless mesh tech in an era where that's unheard of. They pick up your local music collection and have a controller application on most OS's that allows you to build stereo pairs or tv surround systems wirelessly, arbitrarily group together rooms in your house, stream music from wherever to wherever and generally just have music in the places you want it with little hassle. I still have some Sonos play:1 speakers I got in 2012 that are going strong, even though they live mostly outdoors now.
Now, if those aren't your use-cases, and you really do care about high fidelity sound (I don't), then it's probably not for you. But it has been great for me and I've built up quite a lot of speakers.
Unfortunately (and here's the subject of TFA) - in the middle of last year they screwed the pooch, and half the time their app doesn't even load any more :/
johncalvinyoung
now if only I could find someone making a similarly bad decision. I've been looking to upgrade to a midrange KEF stereo pair. :)
mitjam
Canton speakers are legendary, I wish I had the money back then. A good friend of mine still has his and won‘t give them away for any new smart speaker.
aaronbrethorst
The app is so bad that I'm about chuck three Sonos Ones in the trash (metaphorically) and replace them with HomePod Minis or whatever—and I would certainly never go back to Sonos products after that. Huge failure. The CEO should've been dumped months ago.
omnimus
Maybe just get separate speakers and streamer like WiiM. You wont regret it if the streamer dies you will still have speakers and just replace the streamer.
werdnapk
This is the route I took. I did not want to get involved in the sonos ecosystem even though most people were telling me sonos was "so easy" to setup. My setup... passive speakers, an amp and a wiim streamer and I can swap out any of the pieces with any nother from another manufacturer at any time if I want.
SethTro
The board likely kept him till most of the bad PR had subsided so the new CEO can have a friendlier reception.
jamesy0ung
I hate these stupid ‘smart’ devices. Personally, I just have some decent quality speakers hooked up to an good quality old school amp with an AirPort Express feeding into the line in.
tomaskafka
Same. Denon receiver, some capable speakers, and Airport Express for Airplay (which I would love to replace for something with a bit less connection delay - come on, Apple)! Only the last part is dependent on a modern stack ,the first two will last decades.
cheeze
I do this with WiiM. For me, the biggest thing is that I have speakers that are >20 years old that still work perfectly. Why replace what already works well?
I looked at the Sonos ecosystem for this, but their non-speaker devices are absurdly priced. The network audio streamer is 449 and the amp is 699. WiiM amps are either 299 or 379 and their network streamer ranges from 149 to 329. I have a few of the network streamers which were 149. They connect into my receiver, into an old amp I have, etc. and work perfectly.
omnimus
Also WiiM software just works better than Sonos so why go Sonos?
frenchmajesty
Interesting but I don't think the app is the only reason. The main reason is really the strong declining sales since last year.
As CEO of a public company you get about 3 quarters down before you're out.
Larrikin
I actively tell friends and family to not try to imitate my home setup after this app garbage, where as I know specifically of a few friends who got into SONOS based directly on my recommendation and my demonstrations of the system.
threeseed
But surely the main reason for declining sales is the app.
And not just the app itself but the fact that despite mounting criticism from the community they didn't immediately revert it. Thus demonstrating that they don't really care about their own, up until that point, very loyal customers.
massysett
Even as a Sonos owner and former fan who detests the app, I doubt the app is the reason for declining sales. Competition is.
Sonos has been around for many years now. When it launched, smartphones weren’t dominant. To control a Sonos you had to buy a controller specifically for it. It had its own wireless networking because WiFi wasn’t dominant. To use it with WiFi you needed to buy a separate bridge.
Online music services weren’t a thing like they are now. Music collections were on your local hard drive.
Back then the main competition for Sonos was paying a pro to hard-wire a speaker system into your house. I saw one of these about five years ago. Built into the wall in the kitchen was a cassette tape deck.
All that has changed. Now there are wireless speakers from JBL, Apple, Amazon, Bose, Google, and at least a dozen others. There’s Bluetooth. There’s AirPlay.
The Sonos app was ok for its time, but it’s an outdated model now. But at least the app used to be good at controlling Sonos. Now it’s not even great for that.
Without that outdated app model, there’s no reason to buy Sonos. Just pick from…anybody else. Many are cheaper and sound just as good. They don’t rely on an app, which is good-just use Airplay or Bluetooth.
As bad as the app is, it’s not a trigger of the decline of Sonos. Is just a symptom of it. The company has no future. Thus its release of headphones that don’t even integrate well with the Sonos system. These are just as pointless as its speakers.
I doubt Sonos is around in a few years’ time.
frenchmajesty
This is a more reasonable take. A single bad app launch cannot be the sole cause of a company falling apart to the point where they need to fire the CEO.
Boards are typically loyal to their CEOs (if the stock and revenue are performing well). They'll never fire a CEO who's coming out of a double-digit percentage growth last quarter.
Thus, the reason he fell out of the boards' favor is the low performance primarily and this was the last straw indeed.
jurip
I use Sonos with Apple Music. Sonos has always been worse than Apple's app at browsing and searching (no idea who to blame for this, not the point), but I'd still use because it freed my phone/computer from the streaming duties. The speakers would handle it all once I got the stream started, and I wouldn't need to worry about being in range.
Also, multiroom. AirPlay does it OK. BT does not.
Now I'm using AirPlay, because it's working more reliably than the Sonos app. Which is a surprise, because it used to be the other way around.
If Sonos goes away, I guess I'll switch to HomePods? I'd rather not, given the prices and reliability, but I really can't imagine going to BT.
s__s
Sonos makes great hardware. Those little mini speaker voice assistant things aren’t even in the same ball park. If they stick to their target audience they’ll be fine.
gffrd
It's hard for me to believe this is the main reason, but I'd love to be shown otherwise.
My instinct is to think it's fuel on a fire that was already burning - declining sales across the market, smart speakers taking a big slice out of Sonos' pie, and missing the boat on new markets (headphones) … and then a bad app release being the straw that broke the camel's back.
mr_tristan
Software problems almost never seem to actually impact brands, but this was so egregious it actually managed to. Even Crowdstrike increased revenue over the last year.
So… I’m not shocked at the timing. Sales have tanked, and proved the CEO couldn’t be relied on to right the ship.
It’s just one example of how long serious problems can fester in an organization. There’s likely deep cultural problems throughout the company’s decision making apparatus. We’ll see, but I don’t see Sonos capable of being a trusted brand again.
newprint
Ah, the app to connect to your Sonos speakers, but wants all the permissions from your phone, incl. your geo-location, otherwise it will not work.
wmf
Every app that uses Bluetooth needs location permission AFAIK. It's unfortunate.
wnissen
No, on iOS Sonos requires actual location services, and precise must be turned on. Pairing a basic Bluetooth device does not require that. I went to Sonos tech support, escalated, and they confirmed you can't just bluetooth pair to activate the speakers. Once you've done that you can turn off the location services, but I feel like it's a blatant violation of my privacy. I returned $800 worth of speakers.
sork_hn
I hated that I had to enable precise location. I didn’t return mine, but damn that pissed me off.
Every couple of months I go to my fathers holiday home and upon arrival i will have to update the damn sonos device and the app and whatnot… its just a chore and rarely is anything different from when he first got the speakers years ago.
I just want to stream my spotify playlist to it and thats it.
To be honest I miss the oldschool BT pairing speakers and I will probably get him one of these soon since Im just done with sonos and I cant see how normal non IT people can even put up with this and figure this whole update mess out.