Business
Sonos tries to get its groove back after upsetting loyal customers
Heath Evans really needed his Sonos speakers to work.
He and his wife counted on one of the three wireless devices he owned to play lullabies to help put their baby daughter to sleep.
So, in May, when Sonos released a new controller app that was so riddled with problems he couldn’t get the speakers to work, Evans was angry.
“We just need reliable music that plays lullabies while we’ve got a screaming baby trying to go to sleep,” said Evans, a 40-year-old entrepreneur in Australia who had received the speakers from his wife last year for his birthday.
Fed up with the time Sonos has taken to fully fix the app, the family has given up on trying to use the devices, which cost about $1,300. They’ve turned instead to a cheap speaker to stream music for their daughter’s bedtime.
Evans is among a legion of unhappy customers who are upset with Santa Barbara-based Sonos. Today, the company is still trying to mitigate the fallout from the app debacle and salvage its reputation as a powerhouse in the audio industry offering an array of portable, high-quality wireless speakers. The hit to Sonos’ brand has swung the door open for rivals such as Amazon, Bose, Apple and other tech giants that make smart speakers to capture more of the business’ customers.
“Sonos knows it is on precarious ground because while it has built up customer goodwill, it plays in a highly competitive space,” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, vice president and principal analyst at research firm Forrester in an email.
Over its more than 20 years, the publicly traded company has weathered tough times before, including the 2008 financial crisis. But its latest misstep is a multimillion-dollar blunder that has forced it to delay the launch of new products and lower sales projections for the pivotal final months of the year when they otherwise would be looking to capitalize on a holiday sales boost.
Sonos said it’s spending $20 million to $30 million to fix the app and provide more customer support — an emergency investment it hopes will win back the trust of customers and steady its financial footing. In the last six months, the company’s stock, which ended trading Thursday at $11.58, has fallen 39%. In the quarter ending June 29, it reported $397 million in revenue, a 6% increase over the same period last year, and $3.7 million in net income.
This week, the company outlined a plan to make sure it doesn’t have similar failures in the future, including improvements to how it tests products before they’re released, the appointment of a “quality ombudsperson,” creation of a customer advisory board, and extending its warranty for certain items, such as its home theater and plug-in speaker products. Executives agreed to forgo their annual bonuses for 2025 unless their turnaround plan succeeds.
“There are many wonderful brands that have made missteps, have gone out and apologized to fix things and won back the trust of their customers,” said Eddie Lazarus, Sonos’ chief strategy officer. “We’re going to be the next one in that line.”
Sonos was founded in 2002 by a group of entrepreneurs who set out to build something that is commonplace today but pioneering at the time: a wireless audio system that would enable people to play music over the internet anywhere in their home. They were working years before the start of popular streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora, as well as the launch of the iPhone.
In January 2005, the company released the ZP100, a device with a remote control that allowed people to stream music through their computers. The product garnered positive reviews including from Walt Mossberg, a tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal, who called the Sonos music streaming system “easily the best music-streaming product I have seen and tested.”
As in many startups, Sonos executives were worried about competitors . The first song played publicly on the ZP100 was the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” a tune engineers could relate to as they hustled to improve the quality of the device before its release.
Appearing on the podcast “How I Built This with Guy Raz” this year, one of the founders, John MacFarlane, recalled the pressure he and others felt to unveil their first product in time for the holiday season — a goal they ultimately missed. Releasing the ZP100 before it was ready would have “killed the company,” he said.
“You had to have a great positive first experience if you’re going to build the brand on word of mouth,” MacFarlane said.
The challenge of striking a balance between moving fast and having a good product is still a challenge that Sonos and other tech companies have grappled with throughout their history. Apple faced backlash from its customers in 2012 when it released a Maps app that contained inaccurate driving directions, Chatterjee said. But Sonos is in a “trickier” spot because the app is part of what makes the company’s audio system function seamlessly for the 15 million households that use its products globally.
“Without that seamlessness, there is no ease of use, and without the ease of use, the company cannot command its premium price with consumers or its premium position in the market,” he said.
Sonos Chief Executive Patrick Spence has acknowledged that the company has let down its customers. He told investors in August after Sonos released its quarterly earnings that the company had to rebuild the app to address “performance and reliability issues” and position the company for growth as the company expands “into new categories and move ambitiously outside of the home.” Sonos released its first pair of headphones in June.
For some Sonos customers like Evans, Sonos’ response has been “tone deaf,” underscoring the trust the company still needs to win back.
“Why on earth would I care about a quality ombudsman? I’m a guy sitting in Melbourne nursing a baby in Australia with a speaker that doesn’t work,” he said.
Despite looking at the possibility of bringing back the previous version of the Sonos app, Lazarus said the company ruled it out because there were a lot of “technical concerns.” While the company has said it’s reintroduced many of the features from the old version of the app that were missing in the new one, he acknowledged the company still has work to do. He couldn’t say when the app will be completely fixed.
Other customers have found workarounds to still stream their music from their Sonos speakers even if the app doesn’t work.
Fearing issues with the rollout of the new app, 32-year-old product designer Matthew Mocniak said, he disabled his Sonos system from automatically updating the app but the solution worked only temporarily.
Mocniak, who lives in North Carolina and has spent more than $2,000 on Sonos speakers, said he’s able to stream music through Apple’s Airplay feature.
As someone who works in the tech industry, Mocniak knows rebuilding software can be harder than it looks. “It’s very easy to promise certain features or certain deadlines,” he said. “It’s also easy to forget that there are people responsible for that stuff on the other side.”
Ben Brown, a 49-year-old creative director in the United Kingdom, said his Sonos app still says his speakers are not connected. Instead, he’s been using Amazon’s Alexa assistant to play music on the speakers.
Brown, who also purchased multiple Sonos speakers for his home, said he was so frustrated that he felt the urge to throw the Sonos Roam portable speaker in the sea while on vacation.
“I would never have done it, really, but that’s how angry it makes you,” he said. “It’s those moments where you just want to take a speaker outside, eat some dinner and listen to some music.”
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
A former female staffer who worked for Beast Industries, the media venture behind the popular YouTube channel MrBeast, is suing the company, alleging she was sexually harassed and fired shortly after she returned from maternity leave.
The employee, Lorrayne Mavromatis, a Brazilian-born social media professional, alleges in a lawsuit she was subjected to sexual harassment by the company’s management and demoted after she complained about her treatment. She said she was urged to join a conference call while in labor and expected to work during her maternity leave in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to the federal complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it. There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us,” Gaude Paez, a Beast Industries spokesperson, said in a statement.
Jimmy Donaldson, 27, began MrBeast as a teen gaming channel that soon exploded into a media company worth an estimated $5 billion, with 500 employees and 450 million subscribers who watch its games, stunts and giveaways.
Mavromatis, who was hired in 2022 as its head of Instagram, described a pervasive climate of discrimination and harassment, according to the lawsuit.
In her complaint, she alleges the company’s former CEO James Warren made her meet him at his home for one-on-one meetings while he commented on her looks and dismissed her complaints about a male client’s unwanted advances, telling her “she should be honored that the client was hitting on her.”
When Mavromatis asked Warren why MrBeast, Donaldson, would not work with her, she was told that “she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy,” and, “Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom.”
Paez refuted the claim.
“That’s ridiculous. This is an allegation fabricated for the sole purpose of sparking headlines,” Paez said.
Mavromatis said she endured a slate of other indignities such as being told by Donaldson that she “would only participate in her video shoot if she brought him a beer.”
“In this male-centric workplace, Plaintiff, one of the few women in a high-level role, was excluded from otherwise all-male meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, harassed, and suffered from males be given preferential treatment in employment decisions,” states the complaint.
When Mavromatis raised a question during a staff meeting with her team, she said a male colleague told her to “shut up” or “stop talking.”
At MrBeast headquarters in Greenville, N.C., she said male executives mocked female contestants participating in BeastGames, “who complained they did not have access to feminine hygiene products and clean underwear while participating in the show.”
In November 2023, Mavromatis formally complained about “the sexually inappropriate encounters and harassment, and demeaning and hostile work environment she and other female employees had been living and experiencing working at MrBeast,” to the company’s then head of human resources, Sue Parisher, who is also Donaldson’s mother, according to the suit.
In her complaint, Mavromatis said Beast Industries did not have a method or process for employees to report such issues either anonymously or to a third party, rather employees were expected to follow the company’s handbook, “How to Succeed In MrBeast Production.”
In it, employees were instructed that, “It’s okay for the boys to be childish,” “if talent wants to draw a dick on the white board in the video or do something stupid, let them” and “No does not mean no,” according to the complaint.
Mavromatis alleges that she was demoted and then fired.
Paez said that Mavromatis’s role was eliminated as part of a reorganization of an underperforming group within Beast Industries and that she was made aware of this.
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