In May 2024, speaker maker Sonos released a bug-ridden app that was met with widespread criticism from users. The release of the jailbroken software not only hurt Sonos’ sales in the following months, but also cost its CEO the job eight months later. CEO Patrick Spence, who has worked with the Goleta, Calif.-based company. 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 searches for a full-time successor.
Sonos speakers are famous for their sound quality and ability to create multiroom sound systems. Billed as an overhaul, the company’s disastrous app launch was derided as crippling the user experience. Besides containing bugs, the app also removed long-standing features like sleep timers and playlist editing.
Although Spence publicly apologized shortly after the app was revealed and promised to fix it with gradual software updates, Sonos apparently failed to recover from the patched release. In its most recently reported quarter (July to September), sales fell 16 percent from a year earlier to $255.4 million and a net loss of $53 million was recorded. Sonos’ stock price has fallen nearly 24 percent since the launch of the app overhaul. The company currently has a market capitalization of $1.7 billion.
The tragedy was “painful for our customers and traumatic for all of us at the company,” Spence said in October when he announced a set of new commitments at Sonos to address the problems at the root of its app’s 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 digital health platform Zero Longevity Science. As reported by The Verge, he acknowledged the speaker maker’s recent problems in his first letter to employees. “I think we will all agree that this year we disappointed a lot of people,” he wrote. “As we’ve seen, fixing the essentials (Arc Ultra and Ace are amazing products!) isn’t enough if our customers’ alarms aren’t going off, their kids can’t hear their breakfast playlists, in their surroundings. they don’t blow up, or they can’t stop the music in time to answer the ringing doorbell.”
Conrad has a long history in the media business. He previously served as chief technology officer at audio streaming company Pandora, vice president of product at Snapchat parent Snap (SNAP) and chief product officer at mobile streaming company Quibi.
In his new position at Sonos, Conrad will receive a monthly salary of $175,000 and $2.6 million in restricted stock units, according to the official filing. Spence, who will provide consulting services at the end of June to oversee the CEO transition, will be paid $7,500 a month during this period and receive a $1.8 million severance payment.
“Tom’s job is to improve the core Sonos experience for our customers while evolving our business to drive innovation and financial performance,” company chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.
