By The Verge | Created at 2025-01-13 13:06:25 | Updated at 2025-01-16 23:52:33
3 days ago
In May 2024, Sonos released a completely rebuilt and overhauled mobile app for Android and iOS. The new software was meant to improve performance, make the app feel more customizable, and allow for new features in the future. But customers immediately complained about countless bugs, degraded Sonos speaker system performance, and features that had gone missing.
The controversy effectively torpedoed Sonos’ reputation with many customers. In the months since, Sonos has worked to regain their trust, address issues with the redesigned app, and bring back features that were absent at launch. The company still hasn’t fully recovered from its enormous mistake. On January 13th 2025, Sonos announced CEO Patrick Spence would step down after he was unable to turn things around.
Sonos’ interim CEO hits all the right notes in first letter to employees
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Tom Conrad, a longtime veteran of the tech industry who joined Sonos’ board of directors in 2017, has been appointed interim CEO following today’s ouster of Patrick Spence. And in his first letter as the (temporary) new boss, Conrad hits on a number of things that will likely be music to the ears of rank-and-file Sonos employees.
“I’ve heard from many of you about your own frustrations about how far we’ve drifted from our shared ideals,” he says in the letter. “There’s a tremendous amount of work in front of us, including what I’m sure will be some very challenging moments, decisions, and trade-offs, but I’m energized by the passion I see all around me for doing right by our customers and getting back to the innovation that is at the heart of Sonos’ incredible history.”
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is resigning from the company today, effective immediately, with board member Tom Conrad filling the role of interim CEO. It’s the most dramatic development yet in an eight-month saga that has proven to be the most challenging time in Sonos’ history.
The company’s decision to prematurely release a buggy, completely overhauled new app back in May — with crucial features missing at launch — outraged customers and kicked off a months-long domino effect that included layoffs, a sharp decline in employee morale, and a public apology tour. The Sonos Ace headphones, rumored to be the whole reason behind the hurried app, were immediately overshadowed by the controversy, and my sources tell me that sales numbers remain dismal. Sonos’ community forums and subreddit have been dominated by complaints and an overwhelmingly negative sentiment since the spring.
Sonos plans return-to-office push for its product teams
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Sonos will soon encourage employees on its various product teams who live near its US office locations to come in for at least two days per week, The Verge has learned. That’s a notable break from the company’s history, throughout which Sonos has enthusiastically supported fully remote and hybrid work. Job listings at Sonos routinely state that “it’s about impact, not location.” Glassdoor reviews have long backed this up, with employees reporting no pressure to come into the office.
But that lax stance is set to change slightly as Sonos continues its effort to right the ship following this year’s app mishap and stay on track with upcoming products. It’s adopting a stricter policy that will call for product employees within proximity of Santa Barbara, Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco to regularly be present at those offices. The Santa Barbara location is where Sonos is headquartered. The company also currently operates international offices in Paris and the Netherlands
Sonos revenue falls in the aftermath of the company’s messy app debacle
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Sonos is still trying to climb out from the hole it dug itself earlier this year by recklessly shipping an overhauled mobile app well before the software was actually ready. Today, just a couple weeks after the release of its latest hardware products — the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 — Sonos reported its fiscal Q4 2024 earnings. And the damage done by the app debacle is clear.
Revenue was down 8 percent year over year, which Sonos attributed to “softer demand due to challenging market conditions and challenges resulting from our recent app rollout.” During the quarter, the company sank $4 million into unspecified “app recovery investments.” (Sonos previously estimated it could spend up to $30 million to resolve all of the trouble that has stemmed from the rebuilt app.)
Sonos has a plan to earn back your trust, and here it is
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Sonos remains in the throes of the biggest controversy in its history — and it’s one of the company’s own making. Now, several months after the May release of its overhauled app badly tarnished the brand’s reputation, CEO Patrick Spence has announced a multipart plan to right the ship.
You can break the strategy down into two main objectives. First, Sonos has taken steps to thoroughly understand just how the hell everything went so wrong — both with its software development practices and its underlying corporate culture — that it somehow wound up in this predicament to begin with. And second, the company is kicking off a broad effort intended to rebuild the trust of its customers and convince them that nothing like this will ever happen again.
You can now gripe to Sonos about its app on the weekends, too.
As Sonos tries to win back trust following the rough rollout of its new app, you can now reach Sonos support on Saturday and Sunday.
Sonos opens a Trello board so we can see how it’s fixing the busted app
Image: Sonos
Sonos is still trying to clean up from the mess from the messy rollout of its new app, and to help give users a better idea of what fixes are in the pipeline, the company has shared a public Trello board detailing fixes that it’s working on.
“All the cards here are sourced from various posts and release notes communications (Future Feature Update, for example), including communications from [CEO Patrick Spence] directly,” says Reddit user KeithFromSonos, who is a Sonos employee. “What we are hearing and working on is sourced from you — the Community at large and our acknowledgment of that area of opportunity.”
Sonos’ latest app update fixes just a fraction of its problems
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Sonos has released an update to its app as it attempts to reverse the fallout from a disastrous redesign. But while the update adds enhanced accessibility settings and improved stability during the product setup process, the update addresses just a fraction of user complaints.
Sonos is reintroducing the ability to clear your music queue on the Android app — a feature that’s been sorely missed since the app’s relaunch. It also added a Night Mode toggle for sound bars, which enhances dialogue without you having to turn up the volume on your TV.
Sonos CEO says the old app can’t be rereleased
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
If you want the old Sonos app back, it’s not coming. In a Reddit AMA response posted Tuesday, Sonos CEO Spence says that he was hopeful “until very recently” that the company could rerelease the app, confirming a report from The Verge that the company was considering doing so. But after testing that option, rereleasing the old app would apparently make things worse, Spence says.
Since the new app was released on May 7th, Spence has issued a formal apology and announced in August that the company would be delaying the launch of two products “until our app experience meets the level of quality that we, our customers, and our partners expect from Sonos.”
Exclusive: Sonos considers relaunching its old app
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Sonos has explored the possibility of rereleasing its previous mobile app for Android and iOS — a clear sign of what an ordeal the company’s hurried redesign has become. The Verge can report that there have been discussions high up within Sonos about bringing back the prior version of the app, known as S2, as the company continues toiling away at improving the performance and addressing bugs with the overhauled design that rolled out in May to a flood of negative feedback. (The new Sonos app currently has a 1.3-star review average on Google Play.)
Letting customers fall back to the older software could ease their frustrations and reduce at least some of the pressure on Sonos to rectify every issue with the new app. At least for now, the redesigned version is all that’s available, which makes it impossible for some customers to avoid its flaws. The situation has gotten substantially better with recent updates and the app has turned a corner for many, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.
Sonos lays off 100 employees as its app crisis continues
Illustration: The Verge
Sonos laid off approximately 100 employees this morning, a source familiar with the situation tells The Verge. The cuts spanned across the company and impacted divisions including marketing, product and engineering, platform and infrastructure, and software quality. I’m told those affected abruptly lost access to the company’s internal network. Sonos is also in the process of winding down some of its customer support offices, including one in Amsterdam that will close later this year.
Sonos confirmed the layoffs to The Verge on Wednesday afternoon, providing a statement from CEO Patrick Spence. “We made the difficult decision to say goodbye to approximately 100 team members representing 6 percent of the company,” Spence said. “This action was a difficult, but necessary, measure to ensure continued, meaningful investment in Sonos’ product roadmap while setting Sonos up for long term success.”
Sonos delays two new products as it races to fix buggy app
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said the new Ace headphones got off to a strong start and helped spur “year over year revenue growth” that slightly exceeded the company’s expectations as part of its third quarter earnings on Wednesday afternoon. But that success was immediately “overshadowed” by ongoing woes with the redesigned Sonos app.
The company is now delaying two hardware releases originally planned for later this year as it deploys an all-hands-on-deck approach to fixing the app. “I will not rest until we’re in a position where we’ve addressed the issues and have customers raving about Sonos again,” Spence said during the afternoon earnings call.
Sonos puts the apology for the new app right in the app.
Can’t think of the last time I opened an app to an apology for how buggy the app is!
“Add splash screen apologizing for app” is not a ticket you want on the board, really.
Sonos CEO apologizes for disastrous rollout of new app
Image: Sonos
The big Sonos app redesign was intended to make the company’s software more modern, customizable, and easier to use. But two months after its May release, it’s hard to look at this situation as anything but a colossal unforced error. Sonos has been steadily adding back missing features and functionality with frequent app updates, but the chorus of customer frustration isn’t going away.
To that end, CEO Patrick Spence today published a letter that covers the progress Sonos has made with the new app — and what customers can expect in the near future. It also contains Sonos’ first direct apology for the rough patch that “too many” users have gone through. Some customers have been waiting for that after the company’s initial responses (like saying the app overhaul took “courage”) came across as tone-deaf, given all the bugs and technical difficulties.
Sonos customers complain about missing features in redesigned app in community AMA
Photo: Sonos
A week after introducing a redesigned, sleeker app that omitted many core features, Sonos held an Ask Me Anything event on its forums today. The purpose was partly to make it clear that customer frustrations are being heard. But as has been the case since last week, the feedback skewed overwhelmingly negative. This company’s community remains pretty damn angry over losing software capabilities like local music search, sleep timers, and more with no warning.
Many participants asked Sonos why it released an app that was nowhere near on par with the previous version in terms of functionality — even after, as The Verge has learned, private beta testers raised concerns with the state that the software was in before launch. And they were often less than satisfied with the answers given by Sonos’ product team.
Sonos says its controversial app redesign took ‘courage’
Image: Sonos
Sonos has responded to the avalanche of feedback — some good, plenty bad — about the company’s redesigned mobile app that was released on May 7th. In the days since, customers have complained about missing features like sleep timers, broken local music library management, and no longer having the ability to edit playlists or the upcoming song queue. More alarmingly, the Sonos app’s accessibility has also taken a hit, something the company says it’s aiming to resolve by next month.
In a statement provided to The Verge, Sonos confirms that it’s keenly aware of the gripes that owners of its speakers have expressed about the new app. It’s hearing their response and is working to address the functionality that has (for now) gone missing. But the company is also standing behind its decision to roll out the app this week, basically describing it as a rough patch that will, in theory, lead to a much better experience for everyone down the line.
Sonos announces redesigned app that puts everything on your homescreen
Image: Sonos
Today, Sonos is officially introducing the redesigned mobile app that I showed you earlier this month. It’ll roll out for both Android and iOS on May 7th, but the company’s desktop apps aren’t coming along for the ride: Sonos will discontinue its controller apps for Windows and macOS in the near future. Taking their place is a new web app that will allow you to control and access your Sonos speakers from anywhere — not just when you’re home on Wi-Fi.
But for now, let’s get back to the smartphone app. It’s been rebuilt from the ground up to be more reliable. Sonos’ fundamental goal was making everything feel faster and getting you where you want to be without relying on a tabbed navigation bar. Now, everything is on the homescreen, and you can customize the layout to put your favorite playlists up top. Want your line-in audio source positioned higher than everything else? You can do that, too. You can pin specific carousels from music apps (like Spotify’s “new releases”) to the homescreen as well. And there’s a persistent search bar at the bottom, so finding music is always just a single tap away.
This is the new Sonos app, coming May 7th
Illustration: The Verge
Sonos will release a substantial update to its mobile app for both Android and iOS on May 7th, The Verge has learned. Based on screenshots provided by people familiar with the company’s plans, the app is receiving a fresh coat of paint. Sonos is also working to make product setup easier and strengthen connectivity between its many speakers. As always, the specific release date is subject to change if the company encounters any last-minute issues.
The revamped app will roll out as an update to the Sonos S2 app that the company released in 2020 when it forked off some of its oldest products and left them on the legacy S1 platform.
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