The New Sonos App is a Dumpster Fire. Of Course It Is (Premium)

I have long supported Sonos as a customer and fan, but I've always been clear that this company's mobile app is garbage, the Achilles Heel of its ecosystem. And so I was naturally looking forward to the "reimagined" new Sonos mobile and web apps that the company promised. And I was just as naturally disappointed in the results, though history should have been my guide: The new Sonos app is a dumpster fire. Of course it is.

I bought my first Sonos smart speaker, a white Sonos Play:1, in September 2015 and was so happy with the results that I bought a second unit to stereo-pair them in the living room of our house in Dedham. I even bought, modified, and installed triangular shelves for them so I could mount them in the corners of the room. Look at me being all DIY!

From there, my Sonos addiction was tempered only by their high prices. I purchased a third Sonos Play:1, this time in black, to enjoy elsewhere in the house, in December 2016. But that was it for a while. When we moved to a bigger home in Pennsylvania in 2017, I made do with a pair of Edifier self-powered speakers in the sunroom for a few years, but when Brad offered me a good deal on his year-old Sonos Play:5s, I couldn't resist.

Those speakers were—and still are—so good that my resistance disappeared overnight, kicking off a massive expansion in our Sonos usage. Today, we have a Sonos Beam soundbar on our TV, a massive Sonos Sub paired to the Play:5s, a pair of Ikea Symfonisk bookshelf speakers in the kitchen, a Sonos Move in the bedroom (that comes outside with us a lot), a Sonos One in the main bathroom, the black Sonos Play:1 in the second bath, and a Sonos Roam in my office. We even have a Sonos Boost to make sure music playback doesn't interfere with our Wi-Fi (or vice versa. I love Sonos. Even my wife, normally ambivalent about most technology, loves Sonos.

But love is an interesting thing. It's rarely all-or-nothing, and anyone can find some fault, even in those things we love the most. But I was shielded from the dark underbelly of Sonos in the early days because I used Google Play Music. And boy, did I love Google Play Music. I moved to that service when Microsoft Groove—formerly Xbox Music, formerly Zune—wound down, and because I hated—and still hate--Spotify. Well, hate is a strong word. But I do not like Spotify, and I will not use Spotify.

There was a lot to like about Google Play Music, and a big part of it for me was that it allowed you to seamlessly combine your own ripped/downloaded music collection with Google's cloud-based collection, and upload your songs for free. But there was more to it than that. I could control my Sonos speakers with Google Play Music. And it's hard to overstate how important that is: That's where my music collection was, and that was the user experience I knew and preferred. And it was seamlessly mated with the smart speaker system I used at home. It was a perfect partnership.

Until it wasn't.

...