As a fan of Sonos products and its ecosystem, I have witnessed the growing discontent amongst similar owners grow across social media during the last few months. It all started with an errant software update, that seemed to break everything it could for users on May 7, 2024.
In response to this fiasco, the CEO has just issued an apology statement outlining what has occurred, complete with a timeline of fixes. With the recent release of its Sonos Ace headphones on June 5th, Sonos branched out into a new market. Unfortunately, the entire ecosystem and its app update proved disastrous across all of its products.
In July and August, new product stability is a goal, along with better Music Library configurations. Continuing in August and September, volume fixes, user interface improvements, and overall system stability are also planned. Furthermore for September and October, functionality in settings and restoring edit more to playlists are also expected.
The benefit of Sonos is that it is network connected, where you can use the Sonos app to stream services such as Apple Music or YouTube Music in one place. It can also access a network attached storage (NAS) box for your own collection, along with connecting legacy turntables.
With consumers opting to avoid Sonos due to the various issues, the stock price has also tumbled. What was a great ecosystem is being ruined by its lackluster software, but the hardware remains excellent. Sonos is also popular amongst professional installers, who have had headaches with customer systems not working.
The CEO appears to be apologetic and putting forth a plan that hopefully will improve the experience before too many users back out.