Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is leaving following bungled app update

Speaker manufacturer Sonos There are some notable changes. Patrick Spence, the company’s chief executive officer (pictured above) is leaving the company after eight years on the job. Tom Conrad, co-founder of Pandora and member of the Sonos board, is stepping down as interim CEO, effective today.

The past year has been a difficult one for the speaker manufacturer. The company released a major update to its software platform, but it was plagued with bugs and removed some long-standing features.

While this can be problematic for any brand, it is a major problem for a brand like Sonos, since it is known for the reliability of its products. The main promise of Sonos speakers is that you can buy several speakers and have them work together seamlessly across rooms and music services.

As a result of the buggy update, the company has spent a lot of time fixing its software platform and releasing updates to bring back features and make everything work more reliably. But it couldn’t get ahead of the bad news, so products were delayed and sales fell.

More recently, Sonos has released new products, starting shipping again Sonos Ace headphones And Arc Ultra SoundbarBut it seems its reputation has been tarnished, and it’s going to be hard to recover — Ace headphones sold out Disappointing.

The company in August lay 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 founding Pandora, he joined Snap as VP of Product and was also Chief Product Officer of the short-lived video streaming service, Quibi. Most recently he created zeroA fasting app.

“I think we would all agree that we let a lot of people down this year. As we’ve seen, getting some important things right (Arc Ultra and ACE notable products!) isn’t enough when our customers’ alarms don’t go off, their kids can’t hear their playlists at breakfast, they can’t be fired up around, or they’re buzzing. Can’t stop the music in time to answer the doorbell,” Conrad wrote in an email to Sonos employees. The Verge.

According to Conrad’s new title, Sonos’ board is searching for the company’s next permanent CEO. Share Sonos It is currently up 3.3% in pre-market trading.