The Sonos app fiasco: how a great audio brand nearly ruined its reputation – The Verge

Sonos names Tom Conrad permanent CEO

2025-07-23T09:47:16-04:00

Tom Conrad took over as interim CEO in January.

Sonos has officially appointed Tom Conrad as CEO, the company announced on Wednesday. Conrad took over as interim chief executive in January following the company's disastrous app launch in May 2024, which led to the resignation of former CEO Patrick Spence.

Conrad has served on Sonos' board of directors since 2017 and was also the chief product officer of the short-lived streaming service Quibi. Now, Conrad says he's ready to start "imagining the next generation of experiences" at Sonos that he discussed in our interview earlier this year.

Sonos' big app overhaul angered customers by introducing numerous bugs and taking away previously a …

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An in-depth interview with Sonos interim CEO Tom Conrad

2025-05-09T16:10:02-04:00

It's my final day at The Verge and Vox Media after over 13 years. And as luck should have it, I was able to wrap up my tenure here by interviewing Tom Conrad, the interim CEO of Sonos. I've covered this company more extensively than any other, and as our readers know, Sonos has been through the ringer over the last year - in a mess of its own making, to be clear. But over the last several months, Conrad, a Sonos board member since 2017, has kept the company laser-focused on a turnaround effort with frequent app improvements and bug fixes.

With successful stints at Pandora, Snap, and elsewhere, Conrad has deep software roots. (Yes, he was al …

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Sonos appoints software veteran Hugo Barra to its board after app troubles

2025-04-10T13:47:08-04:00

As Sonos continues a company-wide effort to redeem itself after last year's app snafu, it's adding a well-known industry name to its board of directors. This morning, Sonos announced that Hugo Barra is joining the board to replace Mike Volpi, who is stepping down after 15 years - the longest tenure of any board member.

Barra has a long resume that includes senior leadership positions at companies including Google, where he's credited with leading "the Android ecosystem from nascency through its first billion users." After that, he moved onto Xiaomi and spent three years overseeing global operations for the influential Chinese phone manufac …

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Sonos is still trying to figure out why everyone hates its app

2025-07-23T09:26:42-04:00

Sonos chief innovation officer Nick Millington wrote in an update published yesterday that he and his team are "100% focused" on understanding and addressing issues with the Sonos app. It's the latest in a series of Millington's posts sharing his team's progress as it tries to restore features that were left out of the app's controversial redesign in May last year.

Here's what Millington, the original Sonos system architect who is tasked with fixing the app, has to say about the effort:

The team and I remain 100% focused on two important priorities:

1. understanding the root cause of every single customer issue, whether big or small, w …

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Sonos’ chief marketing officer has left the company

2025-02-10T15:27:02-05:00

In a continued shuffling of the top ranks at Sonos, chief marketing officer Jordan Saxemard has exited the company. His departure is effective immediately. The news was announced during an internal call on Monday. Lindsay Whitworth, who has been at Sonos for over 20 years, will lead the brand's marketing on an interim basis.

Internally, employees are happy about Whitworth taking over. She's a longtime Sonos veteran who understands the company's culture and customer base, and giving her the marketing reins is another move by interim CEO Tom Conrad to show rank-and-file employees that he's serious about getting Sonos back on track in 2025.

S …

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Sonos explored creating a MagSafe speaker for iPhones

2025-02-06T15:15:30-05:00

Not long before last year's software quagmire thrust the company into controversy, Sonos tinkered with an idea that some employees believed might resonate with Gen Z customers. Engineers at Sonos prototyped a miniature speaker that could magnetically connect to the back of Apple's recent iPhones.

At least conceptually, the since-abandoned product sounds rather similar to JBL's Soundboost speaker. Released back in 2016, that MotoMod accessory was designed to attach to Motorola's Moto Z lineup of smartphones. Any time you placed it on the phone, music and other audio would automatically play through the Soundboost, which offered louder and m …

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Sonos lays off 200 employees as its struggles continue

2025-02-05T17:34:03-05:00

Things at Sonos are getting worse before they get better - if they're going to get better. Today the company laid off approximately 200 employees, The Verge has learned. The news was announced at around 4PM ET, and a letter to employees from interim CEO Tom Conrad was posted on Sonos' website shortly thereafter. "One thing I've observed first hand is that we've become mired in too many layers that have made collaboration and decision-making harder than it needs to be," Conrad wrote. "So across the company today we are reorganizing into flatter, smaller, and more focused teams."

Conrad clearly sees a need to rethink the way Sonos operates as …

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Sonos continues to clean house with departure of chief commercial officer

2025-01-15T14:35:42-05:00

This week is quickly becoming a sea change moment for Sonos as the company looks to undo the damage done to its reputation since last May. It all began on Monday with the departure of CEO Patrick Spence, who was replaced by board member Tom Conrad. Then came news that chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin would also be leaving the company - another indication that Sonos is serious about correcting course and taking accountability for its new app woes.

In a third shakeup within the company's leadership ranks, I can report that chief commercial officer Deirdre Findlay also plans to leave Sonos in the coming weeks. The company's corporate …

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Sonos’ chief product officer is leaving the company

2025-01-14T16:33:56-05:00

A day after Sonos announced a CEO transition, the company is making more moves. Chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin will also be leaving his position. Some employees have told me that Bouvat-Merlin shares a significant amount of blame for the brand damage that Sonos has endured over the last year after deciding to release an overhauled mobile app well before it was ready for customers. There have been reports that top executives at the company ignored warnings from engineers and app testers that the new software wasn't up to par ahead of its May rollout. Those alarms didn't stop it from shipping.

In an email to staff, interim CEO Tom …

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Sonos’ interim CEO hits all the right notes in first letter to employees

2025-01-13T08:00:00-05:00

Tom Conrad, a longtime veteran of the tech industry who joined Sonos' board of directors in 2017, has been appointed interim CEO following today's ouster of Patrick Spence. And in his first letter as the (temporary) new boss, Conrad hits on a number of things that will likely be music to the ears of rank-and-file Sonos employees.

"I've heard from many of you about your own frustrations about how far we've drifted from our shared ideals," he says in the letter. "There's a tremendous amount of work in front of us, including what I'm sure will be some very challenging moments, decisions, and trade-offs, but I'm energized by the passion I see a …

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