“Disappointing”: Sonos CEO says old, user-preferred app can’t be re-released

S2 isn't coming back —

Patrick Spence admits Sonos has made "painful mistakes" recently.

Sonos' new app was launched and reviewed so poorly that the company is expecting to spend $20 million to $30 million on remediation. The Verge reported last week that high-level Sonos executives were considering relaunching the old app so users can have the functionality and stability that the update lacks. However, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence confirmed yesterday that the old app won't be re-released.

In May, Sonos launched an updated companion app for controlling its devices that was maligned for a lack of features. With users being vocal about their disappointment to lose functionality, like local music library access, sleep timers, and accessibility features, and the app seemingly being rushed out prematurely, by July, Spence had apologized for the app and promised biweekly updates to fix the software's problems.

Fixing the app and Sonos' reputation has been critical for the Santa Barbara, California-headquartered company, leading Sonos to delay two hardware launches it had planned for its fiscal Q4. In more bad news for the firm, it said last week that it would be laying off 100 people.

In a Reddit AMA yesterday spotted by The Verge, Spence said he was "hopeful" that Sonos could re-release the old app "until very recently," explaining:

The trick of course is that Sonos is not just the mobile app, but software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud too. In the months since the new mobile app launched we’ve been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2, [the old app], is less reliable & less stable then [sic] what you remember. After doing extensive testing we’ve reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better. I’m sure this is disappointing. It was disappointing to me.

In a call with investors earlier this month, Spence said that the new app required "a redesign of the entire system—not only the app but also the player side of our system, as well as our cloud infrastructure."

When asked by a Redditor why the cloud was such a core part of the app overhaul, Spence said that, like previously, the cloud is used to give users of the new app the ability to access and search cloud-based music services and to retrieve and save preferences. In the new app, the cloud was "standardized & modernized," Spence said via Reddit yesterday, "so that cloud-based music services could more easily connect."

“Painful mistakes”

During the online discussion with frustrated users, Spence admitted that the company "made some painful mistakes these last few months" but noted that the company has hard-working people.

He also further explained Sonos' difficulties in resolving its app woes.

“Part of the hard truth of the last few months is that you’re having experiences with our products that are hard to reproduce in our labs," Spence said, pointing to feedback on Reddit helping Sonos address problems.

This isn't the first time Sonos has expressed difficulties in recreating problems that seem at least somewhat widespread among users. In November, Scott Fink, product manager for home theater at Sonos, told Ars Technica that the Arc soundbar's widely reported loud popping noise problems were "extremely difficult to reproduce" (Sonos has resolved that problem).

Moving forward, Sonos' CEO said he would "pop back on Reddit some nights and weekends to engage on the most upvoted questions." But at this point, it looks like it will be a while before Sonos users can expect an app experience that's comparable to the old one.