Some changes to Sonos. Patrick Spence, the company’s chief executive (pictured above), is leaving the company after eight years in the job. Tom Conrad, co-founder of Pandora and a Sonos board member, will take over as interim CEO starting today.
2024 has been a tricky year for the speaker manufacturer. The company released a major update to its software platform that was plagued with bugs and removed some old features.
While this can be problematic for any brand, it’s a major issue for a brand like Sonos. It is a brand known for the reliability of its products. The main promise of Sonos speakers is that you can buy several speakers and they will work together seamlessly across rooms and music services.
As a result, the company spent a ton of time tweaking its software platform and releasing app updates to add features and make everything work more reliably. Products were delayed and sales decreased.
Recently, the company started shipping new products again with the release of the Sonos Ace headphones and the Arc Ultra soundbar. But it looks like the company’s reputation has been damaged and will be hard to recover from – sales of Ace headphones have been disappointing.
In August, the company laid off 100 employees, or about 6% of the company’s workforce at the time. Revenue fell 16% in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the same quarter in 2023.
Tom Conrad, the company’s interim CEO, has had a long career in technology. After founding Pandora, he joined Snap as VP of Product. He was also the Chief Product Office for the short-lived video streaming service Quibi. More recently, he created Zero, a fasting app.
“I think we will all agree that this year we have left a lot of people disappointed. As we’ve seen, getting a few important things right (the Arc Ultra and Ace are incredible products!) just isn’t enough when our customers’ alarms don’t go off, their kids can’t listen to their breakfast playlist, surrounds don’t turn on, or can’t stop the music in time to answer the buzzing doorbell,” Conrad wrote in an email to Sonos employees obtained by The Verge.
As Conrad’s new title suggests, the Sonos board is looking for the company’s next permanent CEO. Shares of Sonos are currently up 3.3% in premarket trading.
