In May 2024, the speaker maker Sonos released a bug-ridden app overhaul that was met with widespread criticism from users. The botched software rollout not only hurt Sonos’ sales in the following months, but also cost its CEO’s job eight months later. CEO Patrick Spence, who has been with the Goleta, Calif.-based company for 12 years, announced his resignation today (Jan. 13). He will be replaced by interim CEO Tom Conrad, who has been an independent board member since 2017, while the company looks for a permanent successor.
Sonos speakers are popular for their sound quality and ability to create multiroom audio systems. Positioned as a revamp, the company’s disastrous app launch was derided as worsening the user experience. Besides containing bugs, the app also removed longstanding features like sleep timers and playlist editing.
While Spence publicly apologized shortly after the app’s unveiling and pledged to fix it through gradual software updates, Sonos has apparently failed to recover from the bungled rollout. In its most recently reported quarter (July to September), sales declined 16 percent from a year prior to $255.4 million and a net loss of $53 million was recorded. Sonos’ stock price has fallen by around 24 percent since the app overhaul was introduced. The company currently has a market cap of $1.7 billion.
The ordeal has been “painful for our customers and gut-wrenching for all of us at the company,” Spence said in October when announcing a set of new commitments at Sonos to address the issues at the root of its app failure. Spence, who previously spent 14 years at Blackberry, first joined Sonos in 2012 as chief commercial officer before becoming CEO in 2017.
Conrad, the new interim CEO, previously led the digital health platform Zero Longevity Science. As reported by the Verge, he acknowledged the speaker manufacturer’s recent troubles in his first letter to employees. “I think we’ll all agree that this year we’ve let far too many people down,” he wrote. “As we’ve seen, getting some important things right (Arc Ultra and Ace are remarkable products!) is just not enough when our customers’ alarms don’t go off, their kids can’t hear their playlist during breakfast, their surrounds don’t fire, or they can’t pause them music in time to answer the buzzing doorbell.”
Conrad has a long track record in the media streaming business. He previously served as chief technology officer at the audio streaming company Pandora, vice president of product at Snapchat parent Snap (SNAP) and chief product officer at the mobile streaming company Quibi.
In his new position at Sonos, Conrad will receive a monthly base salary of $175,000 alongside $2.6 million in restricted stock units, according to a regulatory filing. Spence, who will provide advisory services through the end of June to oversee the CEO transition, will be paid $7,500 per month during this period and receive $1.8 million in severance payment.
“Tom’s mandate is to improve the Sonos core experience for our customers while optimizing our business to drive innovation and financial performance,” the company’s chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.
