Speaker manufacturer Sonos is seeing some major changes. Patrick Spence, the company’s chief executive (pictured above), is leaving the company after eight years in the job. Pandora co-founder and Sonos board member Tom Conrad is taking over as interim CEO starting today.
Last year was a complicated one 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 is a major issue for a brand like Sonos, as they are known for the reliability of their products. The main promise of Sonos speakers is that you can buy multiple speakers and they will work seamlessly together in rooms and music services.
As a result of the buggy update, the company spent a lot of time patching its software platform and releasing updates to restore features and make everything work more reliably. But he couldn’t get ahead of the bad news, so products were delayed and sales fell.
More recently, Sonos has started shipping new products again, releasing the Sonos Ace headphones and Arc Ultra Soundbarbut it looks like its reputation has been tarnished and will be hard to recover from — sales of Ace headphones are down 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 technology. After serving as Pandora’s first CTO, he joined Snap as VP of Product and was also the head of product for the short-lived video streaming service, Quibi. More recently, he created Zeroa fasting app.
“I think we’ll all agree that we let a lot of people down this year. As we’ve seen, getting some important things right (the Arc Ultra and Ace are notable products!) isn’t enough when our customers’ alarms aren’t going off, their kids can’t listen to their playlist during breakfast, the their environment can’t be heard “fire up, or can’t stop the music in time to answer the doorbell,” Conrad wrote in an email to Sonos employees that received The Verge.
As Conrad’s new title suggests, the Sonos board is looking for the company’s next permanent CEO. Sonos shares are up 3.3% in premarket trading.
