Sonos

includes Sonos Five, Sonos Beam, Sonos Play:5, Sonos App, Sonos Controller

13 statements across 1 episodes · 1 bullish · 5 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Feb 19, 2024 by John MacFarlane · said 116 times in 7 episodes since 2023 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Guy Raz (105), John MacFarlane (11)

tap a year for its mentions
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2024 68 mentions in 1 episode
2023 48 mentions in 6 episodes 8 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Sonos, oldest first

Feb 19, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The First Song Played on Sonos Was the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn"
“That's all true. It just fit. These were the first units that were fully assembled. We had a room that had the Quality Assurance team in it, and they were really trying to beat it up, and I thought that was the appropriate song, because they had a lot of work …”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 59:19 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Sonos Initially Relied on Ripped MP3s Before Streaming Platforms Emerged
“It took time until the services like Rhapsody or Pandora, you know, could really express all that was available. And that was really when it opened up for Sonos, but initially it was your ripped music collection.”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 17:10 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 bullish
Insight
Failing to Deliver Wireless Audio Radically Shrinks the Consumer Addressable Market
“If you didn't deliver an experience wirelessly, you just weren't, you shrunk the market tremendously”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 14:20 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 negative
Opinion
Legacy Hardware Incumbents Assigned B and C Teams to Home Audio
“So the traditional audio market that you're mentioning, we didn't really view them at all in the same way. Mindset is us. While they did fill the home with music, they just, you know, it was usually the B or C team TVs were much more popular, home theater rece…”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 41:26 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Sonos Anticipated Apple, Amazon, and Google Would Enter the Audio Market
“What we were worried about is that Apple, Amazon, and Google would ultimately get into this space, and they understood software clearly they had a global footprint, They could do an amazing job, so we knew down the road we would compete, be competing with them…”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 41:35 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 neutral
Insight
Cloud Music Adoption Required Incremental Hardware Stepping Stones Like the iPod
“For example, you look now at the cloud services. They were out the same time we really got started, and it was a wonderful thing, but people could not get their heads around getting their music out of the cloud. It was, it took a lot of incremental change, lik…”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 16:05 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 negative
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Steve Jobs Pounded MacFarlane's Chest, Threatening to Sue Sonos Out of Existence
“He walked right up to me and pounded on my chest and said they were gonna sue us out of existence for having a scroll ring on our remote.”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 27:36 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
MacFarlane Left the Sonos Board to Avoid Micromanaging His Successor
“I didn't want to be in a position where I was second guessing what Patrick was doing. I mean, when I left, I didn't stay on the board because who wants to have the founder of the board sitting on the board of the company that you're running.”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 53:03 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024
Insight
Startups Only Compete Against a Tech Giant's Specific Division
“You're not really competing against the whole company. You're competing against the section that's making a competitive product.”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 56:24 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024
What-if
Sonos Would Have Shut Down Without Early Mesh Wi-Fi Success
“And that, that was a big effort which had we not been successful, we probably would have stopped doing it in the early days.”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 21:44 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 negative
What-if
Releasing the 2004 Sonos Prototype Would Have Killed the Company
“In retrospect, it wouldn't have made any difference, and we would have killed the company had we released The quality of product it was at that time.”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 29:48 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024
Assertion Supported
MacFarlane: Purchased iTunes tracks could not play on Sonos due to DRM
“Well, that's where it got a little complicated because iTunes had that digital rights management. So if you bought an iTunes track, you couldn't play that. But if you used iTunes to play your ripped music, you could.”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 34:21 Sonos: John MacFarlane
Feb 19, 2024 negative
Insight
TiVo Failed by Refusing to Choose Between a Product or Service Model
“TiVo was a great company, but never decided, was it a product? Was it a service? Which is it? Is it both? And as the idea becomes mainstream, you've really got to do that and dive deeply. And the companies that survive do that well, and the companies that don'…”
John MacFarlane Feb 19, 2024 ▶ 56:31 Sonos: John MacFarlane
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