Sonos had a very bad 2024, starting with the relaunch of its app in March, which instantly irritated customers with missing features and slow performance. Sonos spent the rest of the year fixing it, costing it large sums of money and allegedly delaying other products as a result. During all of this, the company released its first pair of headphones, which were not a huge success.
Many Sonos users directed their ire at CEO Patrick Spence, and it appears the Sonos board of directors agreed: Spence will leave Sonos immediately, with a former Pandora (the music streaming service) executive stepping in to replace him effectively. temporary, while the search for a long-term CEO continues (via Bloomberg).
Tom Conrad is the name of the man taking control for now, and he says he has a prominent arm tattoo of Sonos Ace headphones, among many other tech tattoos, so we could say he wears his love for the company on his sleeve. sleeve.
Conrad said in his letter to employees (via The Verge):
“I think we’ll all agree that we’ve let too many people down this year. As we’ve seen, doing a few important things right (Arc Ultra and Ace are amazing products!) isn’t enough when our customers’ alarms aren’t ringing, their kids “They can’t listen to their playlist during breakfast, their speakers don’t turn on, or they can’t pause the music in time to answer the doorbell.”
“I’m here to get us back on track. But is getting back on track enough?”
“I think the answer is clearly no. Getting back to basics is necessary, but it’s clearly not enough to unlock the future we all envision for Sonos. That’s why I’d love for every Sonos customer I know to tell me, ‘You work at Sonos!’ !? I love my Sonos!”, what really gets me up in the morning is the idea that we can expand the Sonos platform far beyond “loud home audio.”
“I have heard from many of you speak of your own frustrations about how far we have strayed from our shared ideals. There is an enormous amount of work ahead, including what I am sure will be some very challenging moments, decisions, and trade-offs, “But I’m excited by the passion I see around me to do the right thing for our customers and get back to the innovation that is at the heart of Sonos’ incredible story.”
The letter above seems to indirectly reference several of the problems that got Sonos to such a terrible place, such as restructurings that changed the way product development was focused and ignoring growing technical debt, which means that Problems could worsen until they become disastrous: you can read much more about Sonos’ slow internal decline here.
Which suggests that the new CEO understands the fundamental issues, as well as recognizing how internal problems create problems for the people who buy the products. In particular, the way Conrad frames the idea that people should respond positively to the idea of someone working for Sonos suggests that he’s really paid attention to how badly the company’s reputation has been damaged.
It used to have some of the best word of mouth in the tech world, but if you now watch any Sonos-related video on TechRadar’s TikTok account, you’ll see a sea of comments saying never buy anything from the company because of the new app (which, to be fair, has been vastly improved since its launch).
It is therefore good news that the problems appear to have been identified by the interim CEO. The big question is whether he will have the ability to change them while he is there, and whether the permanent CEO shares his views, or even if all goes well in the long term, whether Sonos will ever regain its prestige in the same way. shape.
