Dark days at Sonos continue, with the company announcing last week that it had laid of 200 employees. Interim CEO Tom Conrad is still trying to right the the ship after last year’s botched app launch nearly tanked the company, and he believes that a leaner company with a more streamlined structure is one way to do that.
“One thing I’ve observed first hand is that we’ve become mired in too many layers that have made collaboration and decision-making harder than it needs to be,” wrote Conrad. “So across the company today we are reorganizing into flatter, smaller, and more focused teams.”
The restructuring comes just ahead of Sonos’ first major project launch of this year, the company’s first foray into TV streaming boxes, codenamed Pinewood. The device is rumored to retail for between $200 and $400, and wireless stream lag-free audio to Sonos speakers and soundbars.
The following was originally published January 21, 2025:
Update: Several days after Sonos shook up the industry by announcing that it was parting ways with former CEO Patrick Spence and former CPO Maxine Bouvat-Merlin, it seems that the company’s forced leadership exodus is continuing as The Verge has confirmed that Chief Commercial Officer Deirdre Findlay is leaving Sonos in the near future. According to the company’s corporate page, Findlay “oversees all marketing, revenue, and customer experience organizations at Sonos. She is responsible for integrated brand strategy, geographic expansion strategies, and all go to market execution.”
Interim CEO Tom Conrad addressed reports of Findlay’s departure via an email to staff saying, “So while it is true that [Findlay] plans to depart Sonos at some point, we have not yet determined the full details and she has not resigned.”
Update: A day after Sonos announced that it is parting ways with former CEO Patrick Spence, The Verge has reported that internal communications within the company confirm that Chief Product Officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin will also be stepping down. The Verge has cited unnamed Sonos employees as saying that Bouvat-Merlin is deserving of a “significant amount of blame” for the company’s woes over the past year, primarily stemming from its app disaster.
In an internal email sent to employees, interim CEO Tom Conrad says that, in addition to Bouvat-Merlin’s departure, the CFO position as a whole is being eliminated due to being “redundant.” Conrad states that Bouvat-Merlin will serve as a temporary advisor to the interim CEO before leaving the company. “Max’s tenure represents an iconic era for Sonos products, including the award-winning Sonos One, Beam, Move, Ace, Arc, and Arc Ultra, establishing Sonos as the world leader in home theater audio and setting the foundation for our next chapter,” Conrad’s email reads. Conrad’s email can be read in full over at The Verge.
Sonos spent the better part of the last year trying to mitigate the damage of its disastrous revamped app launch, from delaying new product launches, fixing app bugs, and even considering relaunching the original app. The effects of the company’s fiasco have finally come to roost, it seems, as Sonos has announced that Patrick Spence has been ousted as CEO. According to the announcement the company’s Board of Directors agreed to have Spence step down, and is appointing board member Tom Conrad as Interim CEO. The company also mentions that this change has nothing to do with Sonos’ to-be-announced fiscal first quarter results, further pointing the finger at the app launch that almost ruined the company.
“We’re going to initiate a search for the next CEO, and we’ll work on finding a leader who’s going to continue to build on our legacy and work with the team to move the company forward,” Sonos spokesperson Erin Pategas commented to The Verge, commenting that the change in leadership represents “turning a page on the chapter that we’re in and forging a path ahead that gets us in the direction that we want to be going for ourselves and our customers.”
The following was originally published October 21 2024:
Sonos’ recent reveal of its Arc Ultra and Sub 4 mark a positive shift for the company, as the two products were previously delayed so employees could focus on repairing its much-maligned app. The launch of the two products could be seen as a sign that Sonos is feeling optimistic about its app experience; a theory that has now been confirmed by company CEO Patrick Spence. Sonos claims that 90% of the app’s previously missing features have been restored, and that support will continue for the app over the coming months.
“We’ve worked tirelessly to address the most critical app issues and reintroduce the most requested legacy features,” says Spence, via FlatPanelsHD. “We’ve now reached a level of quality that gives us the confidence to release our exciting new products. As outlined in our commitments, we will continue to improve the software regularly and are determined to make the Sonos experience better than ever.”
The following was originally published October 7, 2024:
Sonos is still feeling the effects of its ill-fated app makeover earlier this year. “This is obviously a failure of Sonos, but it starts with me in terms of where it started,” CEO Patrick Spence told Reuters in an interview. Spence confided that the company fell short by trying to rush the app’s release, leading to a shortage of proper testing, as well as trying to cram in as many features as possible without sufficient time.
“We underestimated the complexity of the system and so our testing didn’t capture all of the things that it should,” Spence told Reuters. “We released it too soon.”
As a result, the CEO says that seven company leaders, as well as himself, will be giving up their bonus for the most recent fiscal year, “unless certain benchmarks are met.” There are currently no plans for any additional job cuts, Spence says. Additionally, Sonos recently revealed that it will be extending warranties for its speakers by one year as part of a mea culpa to its consumers, as well as forming a customer advisory board to help advise executives on company improvements, and delaying several products to focus on fixing the app.
The following was originally published August 26, 2024:
Those remaining hopeful that Sonos would re-release its old app as a temporary solution for its ongoing app crisis will be disappointed to hear that it won’t be happening. We previously reported that The Verge had revealed information that higher-ups in the audio company were considering going back to the old app. In a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), Sonos CEO Patrick Spence confirms that he was “hopeful” that the idea would work “until very recently,” but it could not be done:
“The trick of course is that Sonos is not just the mobile app, but software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud too. In the months since the new mobile app launched we’ve been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2 is less reliable & less stable then [sic] what you remember. After doing extensive testing we’ve reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better. I’m sure this is disappointing. It was disappointing to me.”
The following was originally posted August 19, 2024:
Sonos’ app woes continue, as reports are emerging that the buggy update has caused layoffs at the audio company, and even indecision if it should just revert back to its old app. Early last week, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence announced that the company would be delaying two Q3 2024 product launches to focus on its app, and it seems like the company has been scrambling.
The Verge reports that leaders in the company have considered relaunching its old app (S2) as its team continues to work on improving its newer version. Additionally, sources close with the company told the publication that Sonos laid off around 100 employees last week across multiple departments. The following statement from Spence was provided to The Verge:
“We made the difficult decision to say goodbye to approximately 100 team members representing 6 percent of the company. 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.”
The following was originally published August 12, 2024:
Just a few weeks after Sonos CEO Patrick Spence made a public apology for the company’s problematic app relaunch, it is being reported that Sonos now delaying two product launches originally scheduled for Q4 of 2024 to focus on fixing the app, according to a recent earnings call. ““I will not rest until we’re in a position where we’ve addressed the issues and have customers raving about Sonos again,” Spence is quoted as saying during the call.
“Thanks to Ace, our long-awaited entry into headphones, we reported year over year revenue growth and delivered results that slightly exceeded our expectations in our third quarter,” wrote Spence in the Sonos’ Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Results press release . “This was overshadowed by the problems that our customers and partners experienced as a result of the rollout of our new app, which in turn has required us to reduce our Fiscal 2024 guidance. We have a clear action plan to address the issues caused by our app as quickly as possible. While our app setback is regrettable, it is one chapter in our over twenty years of delighting customers. I speak for everyone at Sonos when I say that our #1 priority is to make this right and ensure that the next chapter is even better than the previous ones.”
Exactly which products are being delayed have as of yet not been revealed. Spence reportedly commented during the earnings call that fixing the app will cost the company somewhere between $20-30 milion.
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The following was originally published on July 29, 2024:
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has finally addressed the backlash it has faced for the past few months after releasing a new version of its first-party app. The product overhaul was unable to deliver on its promise of making the app easier to use with new features and a more modern UI. Upon release, users began complaining that the app didn’t function properly, with some Sonos devices becoming difficult or even impossible to pair with, local music libraries ceasing to function, and missing standard features such as timers and alarms.
Since releasing the new app, Sonos has slowly been adding back features that were missing over time, but user consensus is that the company’s response to the fiasco has been insufficient and tone deaf, with the company’s Chief Product Officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin telling The Verge, “It takes courage to rebuild a brand’s core product from the ground up, and to do so knowing it may require taking a few steps back to ultimately leap into the future.”
Details and images of Sonos’ upcoming ultrapremium soundbar emerge
Late last week Spence published a blog post addressing the Sonos app concerns and laying out a roadmap for the near future.
“We know that too many of you have experienced significant problems with our new app which rolled out on May 7, and I want to begin by personally apologizing for disappointing you,” wrote Spence. “There isn’t an employee at Sonos who isn’t pained by having let you down, and I assure you that fixing the app for all of our customers and partners has been and continues to be our number one priority.”
Spence’s roadmap goes through August, each month improving features such as volume response, alarm consistency, and the interface, as well as adding back features like Music Library configuration options and playlist edits.
“We deeply appreciate your patience as we address these issues,” concludes Spence. “We know we have work to do to earn back your trust and are working hard to do just that.”
