In May 2024, Sonos rolled out a major app redesign. It was intended to support the launch of new headphones, marking a bold move into a new market. But what followed was a textbook example of what happens when you deprioritise your existing users.
Key features disappeared overnight. Alarms, sleep timers, playlist editing. All gone. Accessibility support was broken. For users relying on screen readers, the app became completely unusable. The backlash was immediate and widespread.
Sonos’ core audience, many with expensive multi-speaker setups, suddenly found themselves locked out of systems they depended on. Sonos couldn’t roll back. What followed was six months of patching, lost trust, and internal damage control.
This episode unpacks what happened and why. Not just as a case about Sonos, but as a reminder of what’s at stake when UX is treated as an afterthought. We look at the ripple effects across product, customer support, and brand reputation, and how quickly things fall apart when you stop listening to your users.