Sonos has officially appointed Tom Conrad as CEO, the company announced on Wednesday. Conrad took over as interim chief executive in January following the company’s disastrous app launch in May 2024, which led to the resignation of former CEO Patrick Spence.
Conrad has served on Sonos’ board of directors since 2017 and was also the chief product officer of the short-lived streaming service Quibi. Now, Conrad says he’s ready to start “imagining the next generation of experiences” at Sonos that he discussed in our interview earlier this year.
Sonos’ big app overhaul angered customers by introducing numerous bugs and taking away previously available features. The company has been on the path to recovery ever since, and has released several updates in an attempt to undo some of its changes and regain customer trust.
In a letter to employees, Conrad writes:
Today isn’t about dropping the word interim from my title. Today is the day we turn the page to an entirely new chapter, today is the day we begin our reinvention, and today is the day we return to the absolute focus on excellence and the customer-first principles that were the founding values of our company 20 years ago.
While under Conrad’s leadership, Sonos laid off around 200 employees as part of plans to reorganize the company into “flatter, smaller, and more focused teams,” and also ended its collaboration with Ikea on Symfonisk speakers. In March, the company launched an initiative to address user complaints about the app and also released major software updates for its Ace wireless headphones and Arc soundbar.