What Happened to Sonos? | Is the Sonos App Fixed Yet?

Sonos recently faced a major backlash after a problematic app update rendered essential features unusable, causing frustration among its users. The update, intended to improve the user experience and support the new Sonos Ace Headphones, instead led to widespread issues that persist even two months later. Despite Sonos acknowledging the problem and issuing incremental fixes, customers remain upset. CEO Patrick Spence’s delayed response added to the discontent. While Sonos promises to resolve the issue, the mishandling has tarnished its reputation, and the brand now faces an uphill battle to regain customer trust.

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VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:38 Sonos App Update Issues
01:54 Impact on Sonos Products
02:56 Sonos' Response and Apology
03:51 Speculation on the Root Cause
06:21 Critique of Sonos' Handling
07:29 What Sonos can do to recover
08:14 Final Thoughts

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#sonos #hometheater #tech #audio #hometheater

[rufdymond]

As a software guy who’s been in software development for 30 years, I just cannot understand how SONOS managed to release an upgrade that was so obviously broken.

[brianfritz]

Long time Sonos user here. I disagree that this won't happen again. I expect it to. They've done it before. The issue with the sound profile change that borked subs. When they decided to get rid of the original app, telling us that many of our devices would just stop working, but don't worry, they'd give us a pittance to upgrade to the new stuff when they disabled our old working items! They are like every other tech company. They care only about next quarters profits. Yes, they borked our systems because they needed to get Sonos ACE out, for those almighty next quarter profits. This is far from the first time, I don't expect it to be the last. I think what I own I'll hope they get working better, but I had planned some additional purchases, that will now be more traditional wired in systems. They've pissed me off with their "upgrades" far too many times.

[Kelvin-H.]

I'm very disappointed with SONOS, the entire app is trash, it crashes constantly, I have to constantly reprogram my system for it to work, just trash pure trash, and great video.

[shervinfarivar]

You hit the nail on the head. I still think they should release the older Sonos App just to let people who don't have Headphones use their systems. That would have been the right thing to do. Like they did with the Sonos S1 App.

[Hibbsy]

Agree, completely unacceptable, terrible communication for the first 6 weeks. They seam to be trying to fix their issues while also adding features people don't want which is mad, get the basics sorted then sort out the new features. Even today my app looses my system making it impossible to change settings on the fly. Was on the fence to buy the Ace headphones but won't be now. Huge hill to climb to make up with good will.

[rsplatpc]

"We needed to release headphones because our sales were stagnant and our investors were pissed, so our CEO just said release it even though we didn't test shit" = Sonos

[lulul]

i actually laughed at the "good news is this will never happen again". haven't we learned anything by now?.

[lostphotographs]

A friend of mine I ride one wheels with is part of the dev team. EVEN they asked to push it back before launching. Trust me... we all give him (youtube friendly word inserted here) about it.
We ride in a group with several Sonos speakers.

They know that it was a decision on the upper management level that the engineers pushed back against. In fact im reposting in the main chat and hope it gets pinned because this needs to be known. Leave the SW engineers out of it, frame your hate toward management.

[UncleSev]

Sonos is proving that app-only controlled hardware is a BAD idea.

[michaelbeckerman]

Sonos just taught an absolute Master Class in what a company should NEVER do. They rushed a sloppy, obviously unfinished product to market (Ace headphones) and then followed it up with broken, untested software that was full of bugs/problems and wasn't even close to being ready to be pushed out. You literally couldn't drop the ball any more than that if you tried. Sonos did EVERYTHING wrong here - they did exactly what a company is NEVER supposed to do...and they did it on MULTIPLE levels, all at the exact same time. Universities will be doing case studies on this monumental corporate screw up in their business schools for years to come. (Seriously, a LOT of people need to be fired inside of Sonos for letting this happen. This is NOT the kind of screw up that people should be keeping their jobs over. SOMEONE inside that company should have had the GUTS to stand up in high-level meetings and say, "Oh, HELL no! Are you even KIDDING me here? We are NOT doing this to our customers. We are NOT ready to roll this product/software out yet. This is absolute corporate SUICIDE if we do. No...just NO.)

[sweetgregt]

Welp going to seriously reconsider ever getting into the Sono ecosystem now. When everything hinges on the one app to work and they bork it this bad, it’s not a good look.

[williampetzer]

I’ve sold my system that I had in my house. And I had Sonos all over my house and 2 subs. And I will never buy another Sonos again.

[slimerone]

the fact that the CEO still has a job tells me they learned nothing and will most likely happen again

[TrueFactBoston]

Excellent video but lack of showing some major issues to us. We would love to see more videos about issues related to all brands, pushing the brand to resolve them. Thank you!!

[spinhero]

I work in software QA and nope..they don’t get any sympathy from me. There are already a lot of controls in place for bug fixes to be released out to the public..let alone a major app redesign. They knowingly released an app that clearly should’ve been in development for a couple more months.🤷🏻‍♂️

[popeefrog]

Just a note. It’s still completely broken

[ryanhaggerty]

Thanks for covering this topic. It’s been hell of a ride for us Sonos users.

[Scalptrash]

If I wasn’t so deeply invested, I would jump ship. Just trying to limp along until they fix this train wreck. The smart move, and one that everyone would greatly appreciate, is to roll it back. They will never admit defeat, however, and continue to string their customers along.

[philrhbrg]

Thank you for this Video! They really need to fix their app and clear up this mess. Its actually unuseable.

[deathsyth]

This is why dedicated hardware functions and user interfaces are important. Yes it's great to have different options and settings to help configure your audio needs but if that's your only way to access those features then you might as well not have them in the first place if the app is useless or broken after what you paid for them.