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Sonos had a very bad 2024, starting with the relaunch of its app in March, which instantly enraged customers with its missing features and slow performance. Sonos spent the rest of the year repairing it, costing huge sums of money and As a result, it delayed other products. During all this, the company launched its first pair of headphones, which were not a great success.
Many Sonos users have turned their anger towards CEO Patrick Spence, and it seems that the Sonos board agrees – Spence will leave Sonos immediately, along with a former manager of Pandora (the music streaming service) who is stepping in to replace him on a temporary basis, while the search for a long-term CEO continues (via Bloomberg).
Tom Conrad is the name of the man who takes for now, and he says that he has a prominent arm tattoo of the Sonos Ace headset, among many other technological tattoos, so we can say that he wears his love of the company on his sleeve.
Conrad said in his letter to employees (via The Virgin):
“I think we will all agree that this year we let too many people down. As we have seen, getting some important things right (Arc Ultra and Ace are remarkable products!) It is not enough when our customers.” alarms don’t go off, their kids can’t listen to their playlist during breakfast, their surroundings don’t go off, or they can’t pause the music in time to answer the doorbell.”
“I’m here to get back on track. But is that enough to get back on track?”
“I think the answer is clearly no. Going back to basics is necessary, but clearly not enough to unlock the future we all envision for Sonos. As happy as I will be when every Sonos customer I meet tells me “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 well beyond “loud home audio”.
“I have heard from many of you about your frustrations about how far we have strayed from our common ideals. There is a tremendous amount of work ahead of us, including what I am sure will be very challenging moments, decisions. , and exchanges , but I am energized by the passion I see around me to do right by our customers and to return to the innovation that is at the heart of Sonos’ incredible story.”
The letter above seems to refer obliquely to many of the problems that brought Sonos to such a terrible place, such as restructuring that changed the focus of product development, and ignore the growing technical debt, which means that the problems they could compound until they become disastrous – You can read much more about the slow internal decay of Sonos here.
That suggests that the new CEO understands the fundamental problems, and also to recognize how the problems internally lead to problems for the people who buy the products. In particular, the way that Conrad raises the idea that people should respond positively to the idea that someone works for Sonos suggests that he really cares about how much 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 look at any video related to Sonos right now. TikTok by TechRadar account, you’ll see a sea of comments saying never to buy anything from the company because of the new app (which has, to be fair, massively improved since launch).
So it’s good news that the problems seem to have been identified by the interim CEO. The big question is whether he will have the ability to change in his time here, and whether the permanent CEO shares his views – or even if all things will go well in the long run, if Sonos will regain its prestige in the same time. way
