Sonos CEO exits following major app fail — but there’s good news
After a disastrous 2024, Sonos appears to be trying to right the ship with news that long-time CEO Patrick Spence is resigning from the company, including his position on the board of directors, effective today.
The company announced that it would immediately begin the search for a new CEO with a spokesperson telling The Verge that “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.”
In the meantime, board member Tom Conrad, a former Snap and Pandora executive, will serve as the interim CEO (via Bloomberg). He allegedly has a tattoo on his arm of the admittedly excellent Sonos Ace headphones.
What happened to Sonos?
All of this executive shuffling can directly be attributed to the release of a bug-laden, overhauled version of the Sonos app that is used to control and connect to Sonos speakers. At launch, the redesigned app was missing several crucial features and in many cases kicked users out of using their speakers or wouldn’t connect at all.
Reports claimed that the Sonos Ace headphones were the reason the redesigned app was pushed out too early.
That decision led to months of complaints from customers, delayed product launches, road maps for fixing the app and, eventually layoffs. Typically, the CEO doesn’t suffer from their decisions while the lay employee is punished, so it’s a refreshing surprise to see Spence actually take the fall for Sonos’ terrible 2024.
The company’s own forums and the official subreddit have been overwhelmed with negative sentiment since the app launch. While improvements to the app have improved the Sonos experience, the online communities are still mostly negative.
From defiance to apology
Sonos didn’t respond well to the initial backlash, calling the decision to release the terrible app “courageous” in late May. Two months later, the company was apologizing for the app.
“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,” Spence wrote in a July blog post.
In October, the company released a roadmap detailing how it would fix the app, which it largely appears to have stuck to doing. Since the initial launch, the stability in the app has improved and a number, though not all, of the missing features have been reimplemented. Though we have seen complaints that some older Sonos speakers still won’t connect to the new app functionally making them very large paperweights.
It’s unfortunate that the app has taken up so much of Sonos’ year. The company released the Sonos Ace headphones, which may not be selling well, but are great headphones. And despite a delayed launch, in the fall it debuted the Sonos Arc Ultra, which immediately became one of the best soundbars available.
What happens now?
Spence had been a part of Sonos since 2012 and the CEO for the last eight years. His interim replacement Tom Conrad has been on the Sonos board since 2017. Previously, he spent 10 years as the chief technology officer at Pandora and two as VP of product at Snapchat. He was recently the chief product officer at the also poorly-thought out Quibi streaming service.
I’ve heard from many of you about your own frustrations about how far we’ve drifted from our shared ideals
Tom Conrad, Sonos interim CEO
Today, Conrad put out a letter saying all of the right things, that hopefully turns into the right actions.
“I’ve heard from many of you about your own frustrations about how far we’ve drifted from our shared ideals,” Conrad wrote 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.”
In the letter Conrad notes that employees have felt that Sonos has “drifted from our shared ideals” while acknowledging that there will be challenging work ahead to gain back employee and customer trust.
A different letter to employees from board chair Julius Genachowski said, “Tom’s mandate is to improve the Sonos core experience for our customers, while optimizing our business to drive innovation and financial performance.”
As we said, it all sounds good, but isn’t yet an outline of the concrete actions that Sonos and Conrad will take to right the ship. The app is already being improved through the steady work of its developers and engineers, but what else will the company do to regain the trust of its customers while making a product that works?
Beyond fixing the app, it’s unclear what else Sonos will do in 2025.
Sonos is reportedly working on a set-top box meant to rival Google, Amazon and Roku. That device was allegedly delayed by the need to fix the app redesign. So, it’ll be interesting to see if Sonos can fix the app and release an entirely new product that isn’t a speaker this year.
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