Sonos has announced that it is to stop supporting its older speakers and some other hardware.

Sonos has sent an email to customers who own effected older hardware which contains the following:

“You can continue using legacy products after May, but your system will no longer receive software updates and new features. Over time, this is likely to disrupt access to services and overall functionality.”

Legacy products include the Play 5 first generation speaker which was still being sold in late 2015. 

Customers bought products costing many hundreds of dollars. The products are still good and still work great. Speakers SHOULD last a long time. Most people bought these speakers to stream music from subscription streaming services such as Spotify and similar, and were promised by Sonos a system which was modular and you could add to it and have the music playing throughout your house. So many people after buying one unit, bought another, and another, in some cases spending thousands of dollars.

Customers were not warned at point of sale that their speakers could become obsolete in this time frame. Remember Sonos themselves are telling us that now they are stopping support, these expensive items are likely to have disrupted access to services and have disrupted functionality. Services in this context seems to mean music streaming services but the Sonos statement is vague.

Customers generally expect the speakers to do what they bought them for- stream music via subscription services. Sonos  themselves say in their regulatory 2019 Q4 form 10-K filing that this is what many of their customers buy their equipment for.

In the same 10-K filing they state:

“We may choose to discontinue support for older versions of our products, resulting in customer dissatisfaction that could negatively affect our business and operating results.
We have historically maintained, and we believe our customers may expect, extensive backward compatibility for our older products and the software that supports them, allowing older products to continue to benefit from new software updates. We expect that in the near term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products. If we no longer provide extensive backward capability for our products, we may damage our relationship with our existing customers, as well as our reputation, brand loyalty and ability to attract new customers.
For these reasons, any decision to decrease or discontinue backward capability may decrease sales and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.”

This is exactly what Sonos have gone and done in Q1 2020, despite their own warnings as to how it could affect their business. They say they believe their customers may expect extensive backward compatibility. But then they have now limited what they themselves say may be expected. They say if they do this they may damage their reputation and brand loyalty and ability to attract new customers, but have done it anyway.

Those signing this petition appreciate technology is constantly evolving, but the speaker  needs to stream music, which is why we in the main bought the Play 5. It should not be heading for being obsolete after only 5 years and there is an additional problem in that it is reported that if any soon to be  obsolete legacy equipment is connected to a multi speaker system, then even the newer constituents may fail to then update with the latest software.

Sonos have been offering 30% off to upgrade to newer hardware which also comes with the caveat that they switch off and ‘brick’ your old speaker which currently performs very well. We believe this is wasteful.

We ask that Sonos reverse this  decision and continue to support all hardware bought by loyal customers or at least give us assurances that our equipment will be able to stream subscription music services for the foreseeable future as an integral part of any Sonos multi speaker music system we currently own.