Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is leaving following bungled app update

Speaker manufacturer Sonos records some significant changes. Patrick Spence, the company’s chief executive officer (pictured above), is leaving the company after eight years in the job. Tom Conrad, Pandora co-founder and Sonos board member, becomes interim CEO effective today.

Last year was complicated for the speaker manufacturer. The company released a major update to its software platform, but it was crippled by bugs and removed some long-standing features.

While this could be problematic for any brand, it is a huge problem for a brand like Sonos, as it is known for the reliability of its products. The main promise of Sonos speakers is that you can buy several speakers and they will work seamlessly together in different rooms and music services.

As a result of the buggy update, the company has spent a ton of time patching up its software platform and releasing updates to bring back features and make everything work more reliably. But he couldn’t preempt the bad news, so products were delayed and sales fell.

Recently, Sonos started shipping new products again, releasing Sonos Ace headphones and Arc Ultra Soundbarbut it seems that his reputation is damaged and will have a hard time recovering — sales of Ace headphones are disappointing.

In August, the company fired 100 employees, or about 6% of the then workforce. Revenue fell 16% in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the same quarter in 2023.

Tom Conrad, the company’s interim CEO, has a long career in technology. After founding Pandora, he joined Snap as vice president of product, and was chief product officer of the short-lived video streaming service, Quibi. In recent times, he created Zeroapplication for fasting.

“I think we can all agree that we let too many people down this year. As we’ve seen, getting some important things right (the Arc Ultra and Ace are outstanding products!) just isn’t enough when our customers’ alarms don’t go off, their kids can’t hear their playlists at breakfast, their environments aren’t cracking or they can pause the music in time to answer the ringing of the doorbell,” Conrad wrote in an email to Sonos employees that they received The Verge.

As Conrad’s new title suggests, Sonos’ board is looking for the company’s next permanent CEO. Sonos stock they are currently up 3.3% in pre-market trading.