We now know why Sonos' app redesign was such a disaster

Key Takeaways

• A report provides insight into the months preceding Sonos' new app launch.
• Technical debt led the company to work on its "courageous" new app, but it initially lacked any urgency.
• Sonos CEO pushed for the app's release despite it being half-baked.

The revamped Sonos app has put the company in a fix. The app launched in early May 2024 with a "courageous" new design, lacking almost all basic features, including support for timers and alarms. Following heavy criticism, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence publicly apologized for shipping the half-baked app and promised to get it into a usable state by October 2024. A report now sheds light on what went inside Sonos prior to the launch of its new app, which is now costing it millions of dollars in revenue loss.

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Software woes affecting hardware

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has been candid about the company's (and his) missteps with the revamped app. He even revealed that at one point, the company considered reviving the old S2 app until the new one reached a usable state. A report from Bloomberg's Dave Lee provides more insight into what went wrong inside Sonos, a company known for its excellent audio products, to launch a half-baked, buggy app. He spoke to multiple sources within the company, including Eddie Lazarus, Sonos' lead counsel. Spence asked the latter to do a "deep dive" into the events prior to the app's launch in May earlier this summer.

The reason behind Sonos' hurried launch of its new app was "technical debt." The existing app used outdated code and infrastructure, and the company had not done anything about it for almost two decades. Work on revamping the app experience started in mid-2022, but it lacked urgency. That arrived when Sonos engineers and executives realized the Sonos Ace headphones could not work with the S2 app.

Sonos fired and reorganized its internal team instead of doubling down

Given the urgency of the situation and the importance of Ace in Sonos' lineup and bottom line, you'd expect the company to allocate more resources to the app. But the opposite happened. To keep its expenses in check, Sonos laid off employees in June 2023 (and then again in August 2024), followed by an internal reorganization.

All this caused chaos and confusion, especially as the revamped app's launch date neared. It often led to angry meetings between Sonos employees and executives, with "yelling" and "screaming" being common.

Sonos reportedly had a list of "essential bugs" that needed to be addressed before the app's launch. But as Lazarus admits to Lee, they were "not comprehensive enough."

Patrick Spence is to blame for Sonos' current troubles. Surprisingly, the CEO has also been at the forefront of all the criticism. The report even notes that Spence is on an "apology tour," visiting Sonos' various offices and reaffirming to employees that fixing the new app is his top priority. His email address, which he has directly shared with customers for feedback and complaints, now supposedly gets over 30,000 emails daily, up from a few dozen a week.

If you are an existing Sonos user frustrated by the new app, I would strongly recommend reading the original Bloomberg report. It provides good insight into everything that went wrong inside Sonos prior to its revamped app's launch.