Sonos CEO apologizes for botched app redesign, promises month-by-month updates

Enlarge / I don’t know how Sonos’ app might have developed during the groovy era their marketing images aim to summon, but it feels like it might not have wanted to rush head-long into disappointing users quite so quickly. (credit: Sonos)

Sonos issued a redesigned app in May, and what lots of customers noticed about it wasn’t the refreshed look, but the things from the previous design entirely missing. Not small things, but things that Sonos enthusiasts would really notice: sleep timers, local music library access and management, playlist and song queue editing, plus accessibility downgrades.

Back in May, a Sonos executive told The Verge that it “takes courage to rebuild a brand’s core product from the ground up, and to do so knowing it may require taking a few steps back to ultimately leap into the future.” You might ask if bravery could have been mustered to not release an app before it was feature-complete.

Now, nearly three months after shipping, Sonos leadership has pivoted from excitement about future innovations to humility, apology, and a detailed roadmap of fixes. CEO Patrick Spence starts his “Update on the Sonos app from Patrick” with a personal apology, a note that “there isn’t an employee at Sonos who isn’t pained by having let you down,” and a pledge that fixing the app is the No. 1 priority.