All photography courtesy of Sonos
Sonos is a leading audio technology company that revolutionized how people listen and connect to sound. Since inventing wireless multi-room audio, they’ve continued innovating, creating wireless speakers, home theater systems, headphones, architectural components, and whole home audio solutions that have pushed the boundaries of what’s possible to the delight of listeners all around the world.
Here are the highlights of our recent conversation with Casey Clemens, Senior Director of Americas Professional for Sonos.
George McClure: Thanks for being with us today, Casey. Please give us a little background on your career path before and during your time at Sonos.
Casey Clemens: I feel very lucky to have been at Sonos for 12 years at this point. I actually grew up as a young musician playing trombone and piano, but about halfway through college I realized that though I certainly liked playing music, I didn’t think I was going to make a living doing so. So, like any smart semi-musician, I switched over to marketing.
In college I actually worked at a consumer electronics store, and I was very fortunate that about two weeks after I left my retail job, somebody from Sonos who I had been dealing with at my store happened to call and say, “Is it true that you left? Because if you did, we’d love for you to interview at Sonos.” And it was like the sky opened up, the light shone down on me, and I said, “How quickly can you schedule the phone call?” That was my easiest interview ever, because at that time I’d already been an owner of Sonos for about three or four years. And so, I basically just kind of sat there and gushed about how much I loved what this product does and how it’s brought all my music to the forefront of what I do every day.
And as a young guy who had multiple roommates, they thought I was the coolest roommate in the world, with Sonos in the house.
George: Of course!
Casey: I started as a retail trainer, given the fact that my background was in retail. I got lucky enough along the way to choose my own adventure between retail and what we then called the Installed Solutions channel that we now refer to as our Professional channel. I got excited about this particular part of the business because I really enjoy working with small business owners. I think there’s a passion that comes out through your discussions with a dealer that doesn’t necessarily come out when you’re dealing with large scale buyers. And the passion around the artisanship of what they do, the fact that they really get to cultivate a unique experience and a custom experience for their clients. So, I definitely chose this path.
After a couple years as a sales manager, I moved into this role, which at one point was the director of install solutions, and has since evolved into the Senior Director of Americas Professional business. I get to say that I run this incredible team that manages the Americas business specifically, but also gets to play a big part in what our global ambitions are in terms of the Professional space, where we know we have a ton of untapped potential all across the world for installation professionals.
George: I spent a number of years on the dealer side as well – ListenUp in Denver, whose Founder, Walt Stinson, was an early fan of Sonos. He’s a visionary kind of guy and I remember him lauding Sonos for essentially creating a new category: wireless multi-room sound. Tell us a little bit about the genesis of Sonos and how that came about.
Casey: Sonos is actually just over 20 years old at this point. Of course, the company was founded long before we started shipping any products. To your point, ListenUp was an early adopter. So, you guys were on the forefront of bringing that product to market. And one of the things I’m always super proud of talking about with this channel, this Professional channel, is that this is one of the channels we got our start in, as we had integrators and small local A/V specialty shops really picking this up. And so many of the early adopters had that exact same reaction to Sonos, which was, well, this is something that’s really unique, that looks and feels premium but also is solving the issue of multi-room audio being too expensive for a lot of people.
George: Right.
Casey: You had to have a lot of gear in order to do it, and you had to have a lot of labor in order to do it. But it was also this moment where we were seeing CDs starting to wind down and digital music really start to ramp up. And I’m supremely fortunate to work for a company whose founders realized, hey, this is something that is going to need to be addressed sooner rather than later. I am now carrying around this little brick in my pocket that can carry a thousand songs. I was an original iPod owner with the silver back and the click-wheel and everything.
George: Me, too!
Casey: So, we knew how important it was to have easy access to all your digital music, but how were we going to actually unleash it? Imagine if everyone was still listening to all their digital music off their speaker phone? That scenario breaks my heart, as a musician. Fortunately, Sonos figured it all out. The products that we started out with were the Zone Player 100 [with amplification] and the Zone Player 80 [passive], which you could hook up to your speakers or receiver to play all your digital music. We’ve obviously expanded into so many different areas, including home theater, portables and headphones as of last year. So, it’s great to see the company continue to evolve, but to your point, I mean the company exists today because we figured out that digital music was going to be as big a part of our lives as it is today.
George: As you know, our magazine is aimed at the design-build community, so your position is right up our alley. Why don’t we talk about some of the products that are especially useful for the installation channel.
Casey: Sure. This channel really thrives on a couple of key products: the Sonos Port and Sonos Amp, which are essentially the most recent iterations of the Zone Player 80 and Zone Player 100. They are compact and designed to kind of disappear and fit into any space. The Sonos Port brings all your digital music to a receiver or amplifier, and the Sonos Amp adds amplification for conventional or architectural speakers. They’re very popular since they can be easily hidden away for a clean look in the room.
George: Always a plus for architects and interior designers.
Casey: Absolutely. And some of our larger speakers, like the Arc Ultra soundbar, are extremely popular with designers, as well, given its refined aesthetic with no hard edges. It is very common for our partners to mount an Arc Ultra with a Samsung Frame television, which allows clients to incorporate artwork while still getting that really high-quality sound out of a Sonos product. Or, if they really want to hide things away, they can pair a TV with a Sonos Amp and a couple of in-wall or in-ceiling speakers. All of those are really the products that we lean into in this space. And we’re very fortunate that a lot of professional installers use this as the cornerstone of their multi-room audio and home theater business.
George: And you have dedicated tech support for the integrator channel?
Casey: Absolutely. Really happy to talk about that because that’s actually been one of our biggest changes as we reorganized our support team over the last few years. We have a dedicated support line specifically for our direct dealers, which is staffed by our highest level engineers who work on our customer experience team. And that team has even expanded over the last six months, so we even have more people available. The results have been phenomenal, with incredibly low wait times and much faster resolution times. We’ve got people picking up the phone who really understand what systems integrators need.
George: I understand the new Era 100 Pro is going to be sold exclusively through dealers and installers.
Casey: Yes. It’s kind of a sea-change moment for Sonos to go and launch a product through limited distribution. This product is something that is only sold by our installation partners as part of an installation service. The standard Era 100 is our most compact and affordable non-portable smart speaker, the new Era 100 Pro adds PoE (Power over Ethernet) functionality. There is obviously additional complexity in terms of setting up a PoE system that doesn’t exist when you’re just plugging something into AC mains, so it made sense to offer this product as an installer exclusive.
We’re really excited about it for two reasons. It addresses a huge part of our business that wasn’t an early focus of Sonos, which is the light commercial market. You see a lot of Sonos all over the place when you go into bars and restaurants. I’m located in Chicago and I’m always amazed how often I’ll walk into a coffee shop, bar, restaurant, hotel lobby, and there’s Sonos, you know, in a place that we certainly hadn’t had a lot of focus on as a company. Era 100 Pro is the best of both worlds, where people who’ve had great experiences at home can bring that into the commercial space, but do it in such a way that leans into that network-first approach so that you have the most reliable, most bulletproof solution so you’re able to run music through all day every day. But it’s also a little bit of a love letter to this channel that loves exclusivity.
George: Can you expand on the benefits of PoE (Power Over Ethernet) technology?
Casey: With Power over Ethernet, probably the biggest advantage, if I’m thinking as a designer, is that you don’t need to have an electrician set up AC main power outlets everywhere. Installing a wall-mounted Era 100 Pro, for instance, you can just use a standard Ethernet cable run back to a Power over Ethernet switch. And we worked really hard on the mount to make sure it actually blends into the surrounding when you mount that speaker. Using Ethernet also takes away any sort of potential interference that you might experience using a Wi-Fi signal.
You know, very popularly, Sonos is mostly a Wi-Fi based solution inside of the home. Of course, we do have some products with Bluetooth, and we do have the option to hardwire most of our products, but with the Era 100 Pro we’re leaning into the hard-wiring aspect of it to get you an even more robust networking solution.
George: I can’t remember exactly when this happened, but I know at some point you upped the quality of your wireless streaming. You’re now capable of 24-bit, right?
Casey: Yes, absolutely we can do that with both local music files and select streaming services, like Quobuz and Apple Music. I think one thing that’s really exciting right now in terms of what we do in terms of audio quality is spatial audio.
George: Like Dolby Atmos?
Casey: Yes. We’re really leaning into that, particularly on our home theater products like our Arc Ultra soundbars as well as our all-in-one products like Era 300. I have listened to some music through our speakers that I’ve heard hundreds of times before, and it’s just a whole new world listening in spatial audio.
My most recent “wow!” moment was listening to Bon Iver’s new album on my basement system, which has an Arc Ultra soundbar, Era 300 speakers and Sub 4. It was goosebumps. About every two or three minutes there’d be some moment of just feeling like I was literally sitting in the recording studio. It’s been really exciting to see how many artists are releasing new albums in this format to provide this premium listening experience.
George: That’s great. I’m glad you touched on that. Before we close, I was wondering if you’d like to touch on the issue with the app that occurred last year.
Casey: Yes, I’d be happy to. In May 2024, Sonos rolled out its new app that was rebuilt from the ground up with an architecture to support future innovations. For its initial rollout, we focused on how we could answer some of the most common requests from our customers, including increased reliability, performance, responsiveness and faster access to music. Many of our customers shared valuable feedback on both the improvements that have made their experience better, as well as the areas where we fell short. We have and continue to listen to their comments, providing ongoing updates to address the feedback as quickly as possible. We’re happy to share that we’ve delivered multiple software updates over the last year to address these concerns and are seeing really good data in terms of the improved reliability of the product.
