Sonos had a very poor 2024, starting with the relaunch of its app in March, which immediately upset customers with its lack of features and sluggish performance. Sonos spent the rest of the year fixing it, costing huge sums of money and reportedly delaying other products as a result. During all this, the company launched its first pair of headphones, which were not a big hit.
Many Sonos users turned their anger toward CEO Patrick Spence, and it seems the Sonos board agreed — Spence is leaving Sonos effective immediately, with a former Pandora (the music streaming service) executive stepping in to replace him on an interim basis , as the search for a long-term CEO continues (via Bloomberg).
Tom Conrad is the name of the man taking over for now, and he says he has a prominent arm tattoo of the Sonos Ace headphones, among many other tech tattoos, so we can tell he wears his love for the company on his sleeve.
Conrad said in his letter to employees (via The Verge):
“I think we can all agree that this year we’ve failed too many people. As we’ve seen, getting some important things right (Arc Ultra and Ace are notable products!) isn’t enough when our customers’ alarms don’t go off, their kids can’t hear their playlist during breakfast, their surroundings don’t fire, or they can’t pause the music in time to answer the buzzing 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 clearly not enough to unlock the future we all envision for Sonos. As happy as I’ll be, when every Sonos customer I meet tells 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 sound at home.”
“I have heard from many of you about your own frustrations at how far we have drifted from our shared ideals. There is a tremendous amount of work ahead 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 around me to do right by our customers and get back to the innovation that’s at the heart of Sonos’ incredible story.”
The letter above seems to allude to several of the problems that led Sonos to such a dire place, such as restructuring that changed how product development was focused and ignoring growing technical debt, meaning the problems could worsen until they were disastrous – you can read much more about Sonos’ slow decline internally here.
Which suggests that the new CEO understands the fundamental issues, as well as recognizes how problems internally lead to problems for the people who buy the products. In particular, the way Conrad raises the idea that people should respond positively to the idea of someone working for Sonos suggests that he’s really been aware of 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 now if you watch a Sonos-related video on TechRadar’s TikTok account, you’ll see a sea of comments telling you to never buy something from company because of the new app (which to be fair has been vastly 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 them during his time 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 way.
