Speaker manufacturer Sonos is seeing some significant changes. Patrick Spence, the company’s chief executive officer (pictured above), is leaving the company after eight years in the job. Tom Conrad, the co-founder of Pandora and a Sonos board member, is stepping in as interim CEO starting today.
Last year was complicated for the speaker manufacturer. The company released a major update to its software platform, but it was crippled with bugs and removed some long-standing features.
While this could be problematic for any brand, it’s a major issue for a brand like Sonos, since it’s known for the reliability of its products. The main promise of Sonos speakers is that you can buy several speakers, and they will seamlessly work together across rooms and music services.
As a result of the buggy update, the company spent a ton of time fixing its software platform and releasing updates to bring features back and make everything work more reliably. But it couldn’t get ahead of the bad news, so products got delayed and sales have fallen.
More recently, Sonos started shipping new products again, releasing the Sonos Ace headphones and Arc Ultra soundbar, but it seems like its reputation has been tarnished, and it’s going to be difficult to recover — sales of the Ace headphones have been disappointing.
In August, the company laid off 100 employees, or about 6% of its 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 tech. After founding Pandora, he joined Snap as VP of Product, and he was also the chief product officer of the short-lived video streaming service, Quibi. More recently, he created Zero, a fasting app.
“I think we’ll all agree that this year we’ve let far too many people down. 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 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, Sonos’ board is searching for the company’s next permanent CEO. Sonos shares are currently up 3.3% in pre-market trading.
