It happened. After a year that could only be described as a slow-motion car crash for one of the most beloved brands in home audio, the news finally broke: Sonos CEO steps down.
Patrick Spence, the man who steered the ship through the highs of the portable speaker boom and the launch of the Ace headphones, is out. Honestly, if you’ve been following the subreddits or trying to get a pair of Era 300s to stay connected to your Wi-Fi lately, you probably saw this coming from a mile away.
The departure wasn't exactly a shock, but the timing felt like a desperate gasp for air. On January 13, 2025, the company officially announced that Spence and the board "agreed" he would vacate his seat as Chief Executive and board member. Just like that, an eight-year tenure ended in the shadow of a software update that almost broke the company’s reputation.
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Why the Sonos CEO steps down now
The "why" is basically a four-letter word: APPS.
In May 2024, Sonos released a total overhaul of its mobile application. It was supposed to be the "future" of the platform, a streamlined way to handle the new Ace headphones and future hardware. Instead, it was a disaster.
Reliability vanished. Features people lived by—like basic alarms, sleep timers, and the ability to edit a queue—were simply missing. Imagine spending $2,000 on a home theater system and suddenly being unable to adjust the volume because a software slider decided to stop working. That’s the reality thousands of customers faced.
Spence initially stood his ground. Then he apologized. Then he promised a "fix-it" schedule that felt like it was moving at the speed of dial-up internet. By the time the board decided the Sonos CEO steps down, the damage to the brand's "it just works" aura was profound.
The $1.9 million goodbye
Patrick Spence didn't leave empty-handed. SEC filings show he walked away with a cash severance of roughly $1.875 million. He also stayed on as a strategic advisor through June 2025, collecting $7,500 a month.
It’s a classic corporate exit. While users were struggling to get their Arc soundbars to talk to their subwoofers, the leadership transition was being packaged in expensive legal paper.
Enter Tom Conrad: The man tasked with the cleanup
So, who is running the show now? Tom Conrad.
You might not know the name, but you definitely know his work. He’s a tech veteran who spent a decade as the CTO of Pandora. He also did stints at Snapchat and Quibi, and way back in the day, he even worked on the original Macintosh interface at Apple.
Conrad has been on the Sonos board since 2017. He was initially brought in as the "Interim" CEO, but by July 2025, the board decided they’d seen enough. They made him the permanent boss.
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Why the board pivoted to Conrad
- He gets product: Unlike a pure "finance guy," Conrad understands the intersection of software and hardware.
- The Pandora Connection: He actually led the team that first integrated Pandora into Sonos hardware nearly 20 years ago. He knows the "magic" that the brand lost.
- Internal trust: He reportedly spent his first six months forming "swat teams" dedicated purely to app performance and reliability.
The state of Sonos in 2026
We are now deep into 2026, and the landscape looks very different. The Sonos CEO steps down moment was a turning point, but it wasn't an instant fix.
The company is currently fighting a war on two fronts.
First, there’s the internal rebuilding. Conrad’s "back to basics" strategy seems to be working. The app is finally stable again. Features like "TrueCinema" for the Ace headphones and the AI-powered speech enhancement on the Arc Ultra have actually landed well.
But then there's the second front: the competition. At CES 2026, tech giants like LG and Samsung didn't just show up; they came for Sonos's lunch. LG’s "Sound Suite" and Samsung’s new Wi-Fi ecosystem are designed specifically to tempt frustrated Sonos users away.
Recent financial hurdles
Earlier this month, Sonos stock took a nearly 5% hit after those CES reveals. Investors are still jittery. While the company reported a decent finish to 2025—pulling in about $1.44 billion in revenue—the growth isn't what it used to be. The "app debacle" cost them more than just pride; it cost them an estimated $30 million in short-term recovery expenses and delayed product launches.
What this means for you (the listener)
If you're sitting in your living room looking at your speakers, you're probably wondering if you should jump ship.
Kinda depends on what you value.
If you want the absolute best-integrated "whole home" audio, Sonos is still the king, mostly because the competition hasn't quite nailed the software experience either. But the "moat" around Sonos is definitely thinner.
What most people get wrong is thinking that a change in CEO fixes the code. It doesn't. It fixes the priority. Under Spence, the priority was "expansion"—new categories like headphones and portables. Under Conrad, the mandate is "reliability."
Actionable steps for Sonos owners
- Check your firmware versions regularly: Don't just trust the auto-update. Since the leadership change, they’ve been pushing "hotfixes" more frequently.
- Audit your network: Half of the "Sonos is broken" complaints in 2026 are actually due to modern mesh Wi-Fi systems (like Eero or Google Nest) fighting with Sonos’s proprietary "SonosNet." If you're having drops, try plugging one unit into Ethernet to create a dedicated mesh.
- Explore the "Arc Ultra" features: If you have the newer hardware, make sure you've enabled the 2026 AI speech enhancement updates. It’s one of the few things that actually works better now than it did two years ago.
- Watch the trade-in program: With a new CEO usually comes a push for new hardware cycles. If you have "Legacy" (S1) gear, 2026 might be the year the trade-in credits become more aggressive as Conrad tries to move everyone onto the unified, stable platform.
The era of Patrick Spence is over. Whether the Sonos CEO steps down story ends as a footnote in a corporate decline or the beginning of a massive comeback depends entirely on whether Tom Conrad can keep the "magic" of a working app alive through the rest of the year.
For now, the speakers are playing music again. And honestly? That's all most of us ever wanted.