Some changes to Sonos. Patrick Spence, the company’s chief executive officer (pictured above), is leaving the company after eight years on the job. Tom Conrad, the co-founder of Pandora and a member of the Sonos board, is acting as interim CEO starting today.

2024 is a complicated year for the speaker manufacturer. The company released a major update to its software platform that was crippled by bugs and removed some long-standing features.

While this would be a problem for any brand, it is a major issue for a brand like Sonos. It is a brand known for the reliability of its products. The main promise of Sonos speakers is that you can buy multiple speakers, and they work seamlessly together in rooms and music services.

As a result, the company has spent a ton of time improving its software platform and releasing app updates to also add features and make everything more reliable. Products are delayed and sales are down.

Recently, the company has also started shipping new products with the release of Sonos Ace headphones and Arc Ultra soundbar. But it seems that the company’s reputation has been damaged, and it will be difficult to recover – the sale of Ace headphones CAN.

In August, the company Deposed 100 employees, or about 6% of the company’s 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. He was also the Chief Product Office for the short-lived video streaming service Quibi. Recently, he has been creating Zeroa fasting app.

“I think we can all agree that this year we took too much for granted. As we’ve seen, fixing a few key things (Arc Ultra and Ace are amazing products!) isn’t enough if our customers’ alarms don’t go off, their kids can’t hear their breakfast playlist , their environment isn’t fire, or they can’t pause the music in time to answer the buzzing doorbell,” Conrad wrote in an email to Sonos employees obtained by The Verge.

As Conrad’s new title suggests, Sonos’ board is looking for the company’s next permanent CEO. Shared by Sonos now up 3.3% in pre-market trading.