Fall of Sonos

I've been watching Sonos stumble through what might be its most challenging period yet, and let me tell you, it feels like watching your favorite band completely botch their comeback tour. This isn't just a rough patch - it's an existential crisis for a company that was once the undisputed king of wireless audio. The problems have been piling up, and for the first time, it looks like Sonos might not have an easy way out.

The App Disaster

Remember when your parents would say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Sonos should have listened. In May 2024, they rolled out an app update that turned their usually smooth-sailing ecosystem into absolute chaos. The app had long been one of Sonos’s strong points. It was reliable, simple to use, and allowed seamless control of speakers across multiple rooms. That changed overnight.

Users woke up to an app that was missing basic features. Volume control was broken, playlists disappeared, and connectivity issues started popping up at an alarming rate. People who had spent thousands of dollars building multi-room audio systems found themselves unable to even adjust their speakers properly. It felt like Sonos had replaced a winning formula with something rushed and half-baked.

The backlash was immediate. Customers flooded forums, social media, and review sites with complaints. Tech journalists were brutal in their assessments, with some calling it one of the worst software updates in consumer tech history. Sonos tried to fix things by rolling out patches, but the damage had been done. The perception that Sonos had lost its way was already taking root.

Funny thing is - I had given my Sonos:1 away and didn’t have any speakers to test the app with, so I was just reading about it in the news. When I got my Sonos Arc with Sonos Ones, everything was back to working mostly as normal.

The Domino Effect

When a tech company loses trust, the fallout is brutal. What started as an app failure quickly turned into a company-wide crisis. Here is how it all unraveled:

• Revenue dropped 16% in fiscal Q4 2024. This was a company that had been consistently growing for years, and suddenly, their financials took a serious hit. Investors were spooked, and stock prices tumbled.

• CEO Patrick Spence stepped down in January 2025. The man who had led Sonos through some of its biggest successes was gone, a clear signal that the board had lost confidence in the current leadership.

• 100 employees were laid off in August 2024, and another 200 were let go in February 2025. That is nearly 12% of Sonos’s entire workforce. Companies do not cut jobs at that scale unless they are in serious trouble.

For a company like Sonos, which had built its reputation on customer loyalty and high-end audio experiences, this is nothing short of catastrophic. The people who had defended Sonos against alternatives from Bose, Apple, and Amazon were now questioning whether the company even had a future, while I was just excited to have a fantastic sounding TV sound system.

With Patrick Spence out, Sonos turned to Tom Conrad as interim CEO. If he was hoping for a smooth transition, he was out of luck. He inherited a company in crisis, with frustrated customers, shaken employees, and financial instability.

To his credit, Conrad has been upfront about the challenges. He called the app fiasco a "terrible outcome" and admitted that Sonos had made serious mistakes. Instead of pretending everything was fine, he acknowledged the deep-rooted issues and promised to restructure the company into something leaner and more efficient.

The Reorganization

Corporate restructures are never a good sign, and Sonos’s approach is no exception. They are moving away from product-based teams and instead grouping employees into functional departments covering hardware, software, design, quality, and operations. On paper, this sounds logical, but it also raises questions.

For years, Sonos prided itself on developing both hardware and software in tandem, creating a seamless experience. Now, with a more divided structure, will that synergy still exist? Are they setting themselves up for more internal miscommunication? There is no clear answer yet, but history tells us that when a company restructures this drastically, it usually means they are trying to fix something that has been broken for a long time.

With all the turmoil, there are now whispers of a potential acquisition. Sonos is still a respected name in the industry, and its hardware remains some of the best in the market. Companies like Spotify, Amazon, and Samsung have all been floated as potential buyers.

The Spotify rumor is particularly interesting. Imagine a world where Spotify controls Sonos’s hardware and uses it to create an integrated streaming experience unlike anything else on the market. It could be a game-changer, but it also raises concerns about whether an independent Sonos would cease to exist.

My Take

I have been in tech long enough to know that sometimes you have to break things to make them better. But breaking your core product and alienating your loyal customers? That is a whole different level of failure.

Sonos is now trying to claw its way back with a new product - a streaming box that will be priced between $200 and $400. This device could be their chance at redemption, but at this point, I’ve seen that even their most loyal fans are skeptical. I, however, am looking forward to seeing an Apple TV competitor… well, a potential competitor.

The reality is that the golden era of Sonos as the undisputed king of wireless audio might be over. They may still have a future, but it will look very different from the past. The next few months will determine whether Sonos can rise from the ashes or whether they are destined to become just another cautionary tale in the tech industry.

One thing is certain: I will be watching closely. And in the meantime, I am refreshing the AppStore to see if the Sonos app has another update waiting.