“Obviously a failure”: Sonos execs not getting bonuses due to app fiasco

Sonos’ controversial app update in May was “obviously a failure,” Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told Reuters today.

When the update launched in May, customers revolted over missing features, like the ability to search music libraries, edit song and playlist queues, and set sleep timers. In addition, some already purchased hardware, especially older models, began having problems.

In a note to investors on Tuesday, Sonos said that “more than 80 percent of the app’s missing features have been reintroduced.” The app should be “almost 100 percent restored in the coming weeks.” Sonos has been updating the app every two weeks in an effort to bring it to parity with the old one.

Speaking to Reuters, Spence took the blame for an app said to be rushed out prematurely ahead of Sonos’ first headphones, Ace.

“This is obviously a failure of Sonos, but it starts with me in terms of where it started,” he said.

The CEO reportedly admitted to the botched rollout stemming from a lack of proper testing and a desire to push out a lot of features simultaneously:

We underestimated the complexity of the system, and so our testing didn’t capture all of the things that it should. We released it too soon.

Sonos was reportedly eager to get the app out to accommodate Ace, resulting in an overhaul of the app, its player side, and Sonos’ cloud infrastructure. Last month, purported former and current Sonos employees spoke about the app accumulating technical debt before being forced into an update that wasn’t ready and overlooked some workers’ concerns.

No executive bonuses for now

Reuters reported today that Spence and seven other execs “would forgo their bonus in the most recent fiscal year,” which ended on September 30. The publication noted that Spence got a bonus of approximately $72,000 for fiscal year 2023. Reuters reported that the company heads have “certain benchmarks” to meet to receive bonuses for the October 2024 to September 2025 fiscal year.

It’s not hard to understand why the executives aren’t getting their bonuses. In addition to the damage that the botched app redesign has wrought on Sonos’ reputation—aggravating long-time customers and deterring prospective ones—the app has had tangible financial consequences. The Santa Barbara, California company is expecting to pay up to $30 million in the short term to fix the app and try to restore customer and partner trust. The company also delayed two hardware releases, which led it to reduce its fiscal 2024 guidance. Sonos shares have fallen more than 30 percent since before the app update, Reuters noted.

“We fell short”

In addition to biweekly app updates, Sonos has spent the last few months trying to save face by sharing apologies and plans for improvement.

On Tuesday, Sonos announced that it’s extending warranties by one year “for all home theater and plug-in speaker products currently under warranty.”

It also detailed how it plans to avoid another disastrous app rollout. Sonos said it will make its pre-launch testing phase more stringent, telling investors:

Our beta testing program will include more types of customers and more diverse setups for a longer testing period. This will allow us to find, diagnose, and solve customer concerns more quickly before going to market.

Sonos also said it is improving its testing tools and will release major overhauls through gradual releases that allow users “to adjust and provide feedback before it becomes the default.”

“For new features smaller in scope, we will introduce an opt-in experimental features option in the app for customers who would like to participate in testing them,” Sonos said.

Sonos’ app was out for about two months before Spence apologized. Since then, the company has been vocal about taking responsibility for messing up the functionality of its hardware and software. But with blowback reaching massive levels (as demonstrated, for example, by 141-page and 89-page threads on Sonos’ community forum), it may be a long time before Sonos’ customers are appeased.

It’s understandable that some users just want their products to work like they did before rather than hear about changes that, in hindsight, probably should have been implemented earlier. For some, like Sonos forum user SBSITC, who claims to have been a Sonos customer for almost 20 years and posted yesterday, tempers are still running hot:

… I used to love Sonos. Now I hate Sonos. It has gone from great to absolutely terrible. Every time I go to use it there is some kind of problem requiring me to do a half hour, an hour, sometimes a day of research and work to restore things. I will never, ever, ever, ever buy another Sonos product or recommend it to anyone.