Sonos’ CEO has written a public letter to users after the calamitous launch of their redesigned app left users unable to use their products.

In May, Sonos teased the launch of their “most requested product ever“. Sonos redesigned their app to work with their new product and bring a new way of working with Sonos products. Sadly, all of the excitement was underwhelmed by the feature-breaking launch of the app.

Since then, Sonos have been steadily re-adding features and fixing bugs since then. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has now spoken out to offer a full, public apology after the company was initially criticised for its initial responses including comments like the app overhaul taking “courage”.

Spence says: “I want to begin by personally apologising for disappointing you. There isn’t an employee at Sonos who isn’t pained by having let you down and I assure you that fixing the app for all of our customers and partners has been and continues to be our number one priority.”

The “most requested [Sonos] product ever” was revealed to be Sonos Ace, their first pair of true wireless headphones. The headphones boasted top-notch sound as well as a unique pairing option for Sonos soundbars that creates spatial audio within the headphones for TV experiences. The app required updating to function with the Ace, meaning the headphone launch were the catalyst for the issue in essence.

Patrick Spence’s full apology reads:

We know that too many of you have experienced significant problems with our new app which rolled out on May 7, and I want to begin by personally apologizing for disappointing you. There isn’t an employee at Sonos who isn’t pained by having let you down, and I assure you that fixing the app for all of our customers and partners has been and continues to be our number one priority.

We developed the new app to create a better experience, with the ability to drive more innovation in the future, and with the knowledge that it would get better over time. However, since launch we have found a number of issues. Fixing these issues has delayed our prior plan to quickly incorporate missing features and functionality.

Since May 7, we have released new software updates approximately every two weeks, each making significant and meaningful improvements, adding features and fixing bugs. Please see the release notes for Sonos software updates for detailed information on what has been released to date.

While these software updates have enabled the majority of our customers to have a robust experience using the Sonos app, there is more work to be done. We have prioritized the following improvements in our next phase of software updates:

July and August:

Improving the stability when adding new products

Implementing Music Library configuration, browse, search, and play

August and September:

Improving Volume responsiveness

User interface improvements based on customer feedback

Improving overall system stability and error handling

September:

Improving Alarm consistency and reliability

September and October:

Restoring edit mode for Playlists and the Queue

Improving functionality in settings

We plan to continue releasing new software updates on a bi-weekly cadence. With each release, we will share detailed notes on what we’ve addressed and what we’re working on next in our community.

We deeply appreciate your patience as we address these issues. We know we have work to do to earn back your trust and are working hard to do just that. I am always open to your feedback, you can find me via email at ceo@sonos.com.

Sincerely,

Patrick Spence

CEO