Millemissen wrote:

beoandy wrote:

will there be a softwareupdate from b&o in the beosound5 to erase the spotify menu option and the logo?  i do not want see this every day ;-)

What happens if you delete the account - any 'optical' change?

MM

okay, that was easy! thanks mm!

It turns out this is indeed B&O's problem. They rely on the libspotify.dll library (can be seen in the program folder on the BM5). This library was already deprecated in 2015 (https://developer.spotify.com/technologies/libspotify/#libspotify-and-cocoalibspotify-downloads) and was announced at that time to be shut down in 2017. B&O have had plenty of time to react to this. They could have implemented support for the newer Web API - or added support for another music service. 

I am thinking that maybe one could write a wrapper for the now support Web API, in a "fake" libspotify.dll. But not sure how difficult that would be....

 

Sucks...

This is all very disappointing!!!! And the new products also not holding what the B&O promise should be .... very good and simple to operate products 🙁

lano wrote:

They choose to implement Spotify as a music service and now the product that they have sold and marketed doesn't live up to what they told us.

Is there any legal recourse?  I'm sure some customers will be looking at that already...   Those who can't be bothered will just stop using their BS5 and vow never to buy B&O again.  Either way it's a 'lose' for B&O.

I know Spotify hold all the cards here, so B&O can't really be blamed for Spotify not being available. However, some kind of replacement should be made available.

A bit of clever marketing would have been to make a positive out of a negative. B&O seem to be pretty useless at that.

Here's what I'd do....

Let's say a Moment costs £700 to make. I don't know what it costs, but I doubt it's more than £700 as most of the development costs will now be paid.

It sells at circa £1,800.  

Send a letter to every BeoSound 5 customer and say the following - in plenty of time before Spotify is taken off their machine...

"Dear Mr/Mrs Customer

Bang & Olufsen would like to make something up to you, before it's happened.  Yes, it's a strange way to do things, but at B&O we really do care.  In 2 months, Spotify have decided to withdraw support for your BeoSound 5.  We have tried to keep it for you, but sadly there was nothing we could do...

We realise that many of our customers bought the BeoSound 5 with Spotify inside high on their priority list, and for many people this was the deciding factor in buying the equipment back then. It may have been some years ago, but we are still committed to you having a long and enjoyable period of ownership.

So, with this in mind, may we offer you a 50% discount on a brand new Moment?  You can keep your existing BeoSound 5 - and perhaps use it in another room or gift it to a friend to let someone new discover Bang & Olufsen. The choice is yours.

All we ask you to do is contact your nearest dealer who will arrange everything for you.  As long as you are the original purchaser of the BeoSound 5 and bought it from our official dealer network - you're covered, and we'd love to make good on our promise.

Etc Etc."

This way you look like you actually give a damn, you're addressing a problem before it becomes an issue, you're not losing money (the dealer can get the £200 to cover admin and make a small profit) AND, most importantly, the customer is going into a dealership where they can see the current product range and potentially make a purchase of some speakers - or more.

Is this a stupid idea by me?

 

9 LEE wrote:

Is this a stupid idea by me?

No, it's the only way to do sustainable business!

Despite that the Moment looks like a cheap China toy that was released after finishing 80% of the exterior design and the Beosound 5 looks like a real Bang & Olufsen product. 😕

Another cheaper option would be to offer e.g. the Behringer interface to offer AUX-input on the Beosound 5 and a Bluetooth-Adapter. That would be the most compatible option to use any music service from your phone / tablet.

 

9 LEE wrote:

This way you look like you actually give a damn, you're addressing a problem before it becomes an issue, you're not losing money (the dealer can get the £200 to cover admin and make a small profit) AND, most importantly, the customer is going into a dealership where they can see the current product range and potentially make a purchase of some speakers - or more.

Is this a stupid idea by me?

hi lee!

as I wrote a few postings before...

I think b&o has now (only with a good support!) this options:

-       pay license fee to Spotify and find a solution.

-       softwareupdate to integrate Spotify connect to beosound5

-       softwareupdate to integrate deezer to beosound5

-       swap offer to upgrade to the moment (inkl. Nl/ml converter if needed)

-       reduced price of a beosound essence for beosound5 costumer

 but I think this all not gonna happened. 

Way to go Lee. That would have been a preferred proactive customer oriented solution. As I said B&O need to get their act together. Sounds harsh, but that's my response to loosing my Euros and packing my BS5 away.

@9 LEE

This way they would also benefit from selling....

....a lot of NL/ML Converters 

:-( or :-) ---- depending on your sense of humour.

MM

@ 9 Lee

I like the tone of your proposed letter very much, Lee!

Such a letter would give BS5 customers a feeling they are backed up.

I like Lee's idea. I would also be satisfied with B&O re-purposing their coding to support Deezer instead of Spotify. I'm sure it's not quite as easy as that, but I'm not a programmer. Also, software programming seems to be B&O's very week point right now and they can't even get things sorted in other areas. For example, the spotty Essence Remote connections, the pulling of the BeoMusic App before having things sorted with the new Bang & Olufsen app, and the random music blasts at full volume of the NL music products. Any one of these issues would be inexcusable. The fact that there are so MANY software issues is just disastrous if B&O wants customers to keep faith in the company.

While I like the Moment, the limitation that it does not support 5Ghz networks is a real issue. That really needs to be updated to be consistent across all of the products. I also really thought that by now there would be some different options to the woodgrain finish.

I truly love(d) the BeoSound 5. It has a unique interface that was designed to keep the spirit of approaching a music player and have the tactile experience of selecting music. Something that truly kept that B&O "magic." While the BeoSound 5 has been around for some years, we must keep in mind that it was the flagship music player for B&O and was QUITE expensive. I feel that investment deserves some care from B&O.