‘A profound mistake': Sonos' CEO talks about its broken app and why it's been so hard to fix
On May 7, 2024, Sonos launched a new version of its software intended to help customers manage their music and their Sonos system more easily, and with fewer taps. What happened next can only be described as a fiasco. Upon opening the new app for the first time, Sonos users were not only greeted with an unfamiliar interface, many found that their systems had become unresponsive and that features they had come to rely on (like alarms and play queue access) had evaporated.
As days and weeks passed, it became clear that these weren't temporary glitches. Sonos' CEO, Patrick Spence, spent the following summer and fall apologizing and assuring his customers (and presumably his board of directors) that the company had adopted an all-hands-on-deck stance and that fixing the broken app was everyone's top priority. However, eight months after the launch the app was still far from fixed and Spence was fired on January 13, 2025. His replacement, board member Tom Conrad, was announced the same day.
Conrad's list of previous gigs in senior engineering and product roles at companies like Pandora, Snapchat, Quibi, and Apple makes him a strong choice as Sonos' interim CEO. But that doesn't mean it's been an easy transition.
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In fact, when I caught up with Conrad on his 116th day on the job, he described it as a fairly hellish period marked by a number of challenges, including his family's relocation from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara — a small distance on the map that nonetheless turned into a mini odyssey beset by the unprecedented L.A. wildfires, four different AirBnBs, two flat tires, and having his L.A. home burglarized. Oh, and his dog got skunked. Twice.
And that was before we started to chat about the job he'd been hired to do: Fix the still-broken Sonos platform so that its customers could finally get back to enjoying their music.
Our short chat managed to cover lot of ground: the company, its products, its now-defunct Ikea partnership, and, of course, the app (and why, one year later, our Sonos systems still aren't working as they should.)
Too many silos
When he arrived, Conrad discovered that Sonos' internal teams were siloed by product category (headphones, home theater, etc.), making it difficult to prioritize, share resources, or maintain a cohesive user experience.
'The first thing that I did was to take that apart and put the team back together into hardware and software design, and then do a comprehensive inventory of all of the projects that were underway, many of which, it turned out, were insufficiently staffed for success.'
Conrad slashed a list of 'dozens' of these projects down to 11 well-staffed initiatives. 'It changed the mood inside the company, kind of overnight.'
A neglected core
It also became apparent that the sheer number of projects and silos had played a big role in the atrophy of Sonos' core software platform. Since 2019, Sonos had launched a lot of new products. Dolby Atmos soundbars, two types of portable speaker, a Sonos-developed voice assistant, its first wireless headphones, plus a major push into the professional installation market. 'The investment that the company was making [in the core software],' Conrad notes, 'was not enough.'
And while the app redesign fiasco of 2024 is simply the most recent symptom of this neglect, Conrad says it's responsible for the kinds of reliability and performance issues that have been left unaddressed since 2019, or longer.
No more trust
Clearly, having a customer base that can't use your product isn't ideal for any company. 'No one wakes up in the morning and says, I want to spend some time in the Sonos app today,' Conrad quipped.
He's crystal clear on the gap between how the app should work: 'I think we have one obligation. The experience has to be fast, reliable, usable, and mostly get out of your way,' versus where it's at today, 'The sad reality is that Sonos still fails too often.'
But the worst part of the redesign's fallout has been the erosion of trust. 'The rollout of the app last year was such a profound mistake. All of the goodwill that our customers would normally have applied when they have a little hiccup in their experience — we don't get any of that benefit of the doubt.'
Legacy is still Sonos' greatest strength … and its greatest weakness
Conrad also appears to be gradually making his peace with an inconvenient and unavoidable truth: Longtime Sonos customers often own wireless speakers and components that date back to 2010 or older, and they expect them to keep working — 'even though the iPhone 4 they bought the same year has long been relegated to the dust bin.'
He reminded me that Sonos gear is 'sensitive to the details of your home network in ways that almost nothing else you own is.' We discussed the intricacies of Wi-Fi and how, long before there were any commercially available mesh routers like Eero or Orbi, the company had created its own mesh system known as SonosNet.
For a moment, it sounded like Conrad might be trying to blame the company's performance woes on its customers' networks. In fairness, we live in a very different Wi-Fi environment than the one Sonos found itself in back in 2005, when it launched its first product. However, he acknowledged that despite these challenges, Sonos has to own the solutions. 'We made promises to our customers that we will synchronize audio across their [devices], and so we have to solve for this environment. This is the life we've chosen.'
He's also quick to point out that if once-loyal Sonos customers now instinctively blame the company's products (instead of looking at their internet connection or Wi-Fi for the flaw), 'it's totally deserved.'
Brighter days ahead
One of the biggest problems with the new app is that it hasn't proven to be an easier-to-use experience than the one it replaced. Conrad sympathizes with those who are wondering, 'Why did Sonos invent this new navigation paradigm?' Like many Sonos users, he can be quite critical. 'It's not my appraisal that all of those design decisions were good ones.'
Still, Conrad sounds confident about the future.
'I think we really have cracked the code on the big issues that we needed to solve on performance and reliability, and we're well on our way to putting that chapter behind us.' He says that fixes to the remaining usability and experiential issues are coming through the summer and fall. ' I feel really great about Sonos right now.'
On Ikea and that mysterious Pinewood project
At the tail end of our chat, I was able to squeeze in one last series of questions around the end of the Ikea Symfonisk speaker partnership — one which produced the most affordable and decor-friendly Sonos speakers to date. Why nix such a seemingly good match?
'That partnership is eight years old and has diminished to the point of being immaterial to our business and theirs. It was a question of walking away from something whose heyday was long in the rearview.'
I was surprised to hear that, given how well the Symfonisk speakers matched Sonos' previous mission statement of 'fill every home with music.'
'That line of thinking is how we got into the partnership,' Conrad acknowledged, 'but it's not really how it ever played out in the real world.'
As for the much-rumored but never officially discussed Pinewood project — Sonos' now-shelved move into the video streaming world — Conrad refused to be drawn into a discussion. However, he did note that, 'You have to know what you can be best in the world at, and you have to bite off an appropriate amount to tackle. Without commenting specifically, you'll see us continue to focus where we can win.'
Down, but not out
From the start of his tenure as Sonos' CEO, Conrad has said all of the right things. I came away from our chat believing that even though Sonos' problems run deeper than anyone had previously acknowledged, he's focused on what matters most: restoring our Sonos systems so that they just work.
Unfortunately, it sounds like it's going to be several more months — at least — until that day arrives. Some Sonos customers have already called it quits and I can't say I blame them. Our home has Sonos speakers in every room (including one of the bathrooms) and my family has grown weary of not being able to play the music they want without encountering bugs. We've even started saying 'Sonos' as curse word, kinda like Jerry Seinfeld used to utter the name of his nemesis, Newman.
Still, when it works, I have yet to find a multiroom audio system that sounds as good and has as many useful features as Sonos. Wiim is catching up fast — very fast — but for all of its strengths (design, hi-res compatibility, affordability, and reliability), it's still not as simple and easy to use as Sonos (again, when it works).
I'll be sticking with Sonos for a little longer. As frustrated as I am by its ongoing issues, I think Tom Conrad deserves a shot at fixing them. And since Sonos didn't get itself into this mess overnight (even though that's what it felt like to most of us), I know the fix will also take time. I just hope that patiently waiting doesn't also prove to be a profound mistake.
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