NAMM, the Super Bowl of music trade shows, resumes in Anaheim with new CEO who welcomes AI and influencers

Timing is everything for the NAMM Show, the world’s largest and oldest trade event for the creators, manufacturers, retailers and distributors of music instruments, equipment, technology, sound, lighting and recording gear, and more.

This week, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown began in March 2020, NAMM — short for the National Association of Music Merchants — will hold its annual winter summit in its traditional, four-day January time slot.

“The Federal Reserve Board recently announced it will be lowering interest rates, so it’s a perfect time for our industry to come together at the 2024 NAMM Show and make plans for the future,” said John T. Mlynczak, President and CEO of the Carlsbad-based trade organization.

This year’s edition will run Thursday through Sunday at the 1.8 million-square-foot Anaheim Convention Center, the NAMM Show’s longtime home. More than 3,000 brands will be unveiled by 1,600 major and independent companies who come from 101 countries and territories in the $19.5 billion music products industry. Long a members-only event, the NAMM Show is now open to the ticket-buying public at large, although its target audience remains music-industry professionals.

The four-day extravaganza will feature more than 200 concerts and 500 events. These include the 39th annual NAMM Tec Awards, which honor audio professionals and innovative products; the 22nd annual Parnelli Awards, which honor live-events professionals; and the 12th annual She Rocks Awards, which honor female musicians and will this year be hosted by 2015 She Rock honoree Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles.

For 2023 She Rocks honoree Mary Spender, a British singer-songwriter who attended her first NAMM Show in 2015, the four-day event is a must. Ditto for her 700,000-plus YouTube followers, who avidly watch her online reports from the floor of the sprawling trade show and her year-round reviews of instruments and equipment.

“With the music community on YouTube, the NAMM Show is kind of like our Super Bowl,” Spender said. Along with Grammy-winning musician and producer Mark Ronson, she will be one of four featured guests joining NAMM honcho Mlynczak for the show’s Thursday morning kickoff.

“It’s really joyous to see people at NAMM — now more than ever since the pandemic — that you’ve only been talking to online,” Spender continued. “It’s a great networking opportunity. I get to speak to bands and artists I admire — I interviewed Carlos Santana at the 2020 NAMM Show — and to be part of events that are really meaningful to me. At last year’s NAMM Show, Martin Guitars invited me to perform to at their booth, which was a real honor. This year, I’ll perform on the Martin Stage at 2 p.m. Thursday.”

Record-setting years

The 2024 NAMM Show comes at a time when the industry it represents is eager to move forward from what The Music Trades — a leading global music products industry magazine — recently described as “a post-COVID hangover.” The reference is to last year’s roughly 3 percent dip in the industry’s annual revenues, according to the magazine’s estimate. That course correction comes after 2021 U.S. market earnings reached a record $8.8 billion — which was nearly matched by 2022’s $8.7 billion tally — as reported by the 133-year-old publication.

“Manufacturers like Mattel have seen similar sales increases and declines, so this is not unique to our industry at all. Things have normalized,” said Paul Majeski, the publisher of The Music Trades.

“Today, more than half the new guitars sold are sold online, which would have been a laughable idea in the 1990s. And the retail market for used guitars and instruments has exploded.”

The record-setting profits seen in 2021 and 2022 can be largely credited to the pandemic shutdown. Live music events shuddered to a halt in 2020 and through much of 2021, while at the same time sales skyrocketed for guitars, keyboards, home recording equipment and other products consumers could play or learn to use at home. Consumer sales leveled off last year as demand dropped and some retailers found themselves overstocked.

Meanwhile, the top 100 concert tours of 2023 soared to a record $9.17 billion, according to Pollstar’ magazine’s Year End Top 200 Worldwide Tours chart. That fueled a dramatic increase in the demand for the audio, lighting and other stage equipment produced by some NAMM member companies.

Also, music performance classes at K-12 schools plummeted in 2020 and 2021, then roared back over the past two years, resulting in a big jump in the sales of school band instruments.

Of course, the music industry has always been cyclical. And the not-for-profit NAMM and its annual trade show have been impacted, both for better and worse, by the roller coaster-like surges and dips of the past four years.

NAMM’s staff, which numbered 81 a few years ago, now totals 61. The 2021 NAMM Show was canceled altogether — after California prohibited large public gatherings — and replaced by a free, completely virtual edition called “Believe in Music,” the show’s longtime tag line.

The smaller annual NAMM Summer Session, which focused on acoustic instruments, did take place in Nashville in 2021, but in truncated form. It has been dark since then, but a new annual event to replace it will be announced by Mlynczak at Thursday morning’s NAMM Show opening session.

In January 2020, the NAMM Show attracted a record 115,000-plus attendees. Attendance at the 2022 and 2023 NAMM Shows — scaled back to three days with fewer exhibitors — declined to between 47,000 and 48,000 both years. The socially distanced 2022 edition utilized only 50 percent of the Anaheim Convention Center. This year’s full, four-day edition will fill the entire center and overlap into some adjacent hotel ballrooms for the first time since 2020.

“It’s still a period of transition,” NAMM leader Mlynczak acknowledged.

“I talk to our members every week and at least one member company each day. What we realize, across the industry, is we’re all still recovering from the new pandemic. We don’t know what the new ‘normal’ is, but we do know what we’re dealing with right now.”

The NAMM Show has endured and is set to grown again, while Europe’s largest and oldest annual music trade show, Germany’s Frankfurt Musikmesse, did not make it through the pandemic. The 23-year-old Music China trade show in Shanghai, which NAMM has partnered with since 2017, focuses on domestic Chinese music instruments and the Asian market. Smaller still is an annual event billed as as the NAMM Musikmesse in Moscow, which is geared to the Eastern European market and uses the NAMM designation despite the fact that NAMM has severed ties with it.

Back to the future

That the NAMM Show in Anaheim has been able to pivot back to January is a key to boosting the event’s impact and annual attendance.

“It’s a huge factor to hold the NAMM Show in January again, after three years,” said Tom Sumner, the president of Yamaha Corp. of America, one of NAMM’s biggest exhibitors. His company will roll out 99 new products at this year’s show, 60 more than at last year’s pared-down edition.

“The concert touring world is pretty quiet right now, which helps attendance from that sector of the industry at the show,” Sumner continued. “We also get a much bigger group of music educators who can attend in January than could in April of June. So, bringing people back together in person in January at the NAMM Show — which is the only remaining annual global music industry trade show — is very important.”

That sentiment is shared by Hans Thomann, the head of Germany’s Musikhaus Thomann, one of the world’s largest online and in-person retailer of musical instruments, pro-audio and studio equipment, lighting gear and more. He has attended all but one NAMM Show since the early 1980s, when the event was still held in Chicago. Thomann will be in Anaheim this week with more than a dozen purchasing and marketing managers from his 1,700-person company.

“Coming after the peak holiday season, NAMM for us is like a reset,” he said. “It offers us the chance to get away from the office and open ourselves up to inspiration for the new year. Bonus for us: the weather in Germany in January is usually miserable, so a few balmy days in Anaheim are always welcome!

“The personal contact with suppliers, distributors, artists — everyone in the industry basically — is something that only the NAMM Show offers … We also run into a good number of German manufacturers and distributors at NAMM just because of the draw the show has — many more than in Shanghai, for example — and we appreciate this very much. I have always appreciated the fact that NAMM has always included panels, lecturers, and other learning opportunities. And less tangibly, I love the vibes at NAMM. Musikmesse in Frankfurt was serious business. NAMM is serious business, with lots fun on top.”

The NAMM Show’s return to a full, four-day January time frame isn’t the only major development.

Mlynczak last May became NAMM’s first new president/CEO in 21 years. He is the immediate past president of the Technology Institute of Music Educators and was previously Vice President of Music Education & Technology at Hal Leonard, the world’s largest sheet-music publisher.

A 40-year-old Virginia native, Mlynczak is also a seasoned classical and pop-music trumpeter who still plays professionally when his schedule allows. He has wasted no time getting into high gear in his new position at NAMM.

“John is focusing on what’s important, which is largely making things better for our members and the music market overall,” said Yamaha’s Sumner, who chairs NAMM’s executive committee and was on the search team that selected Mlynczak. “He has set forth plans for the shorter and longer term. He’s definitely a change agent.”

“I’d agree with that,” said Joe Lamond, who last year retired after 21 years as NAMM’s president and CEO. “I’ve known John and worked with him for a very long time — including lobbying together for music education in Washington, D.C. — and I think the world of him.

“Everything within the music products industry and music world is changing, and I felt it was time to really point NAMM into the future. So, I couldn’t be more excited about John’s selection. And I couldn’t be more proud of what he’s done so far and what I think he’ll do in the future.”

For Mlynczak, the future is now — and this week’s NAMM Show provides a key opportunity to help propel the event forward, including by making social influencers a part of the event, not outsiders looking in.

‘Evolutionary agent’

At the event’s Thursday opening session, Industry Insights — previously known as NAMM’s Breakfast of Champions — Mlynczak will unveil a number of new initiatives and stress that NAMM is a year-round organization that supports and provides services to its members year-round.

“In my job as an industry leader, you won’t ever do things that everyone will approve of at same time,” Mlynczak noted. “But we make everyone feel cared for and approved of. I see myself as an evolutionary agent more than an agent of change.”

True to his word, rather than shy away from AI — which some see as a major threat to NAMM’s constituents and the way their industry does business — Mlynczak is embracing it. He estimates that about 20 percent of this year’s 200 NAMM Show educational panels and related presentations will include an AI component.

“The NAMM Show started in 1902 and the history of our industry is a history of threats and opportunities,” said Mlynczak, who is embracing social influencers as a vital part of this year’s NAMM Show.

“We have thrived on new threats, dating back to back to bicycles becoming popular. That was a huge threat because kids were riding their bikes and not practicing piano. There were lawsuits filed over (the surge of) drum machines.

“Is AI a threat to our industry, or an opportunity? Long term, it’s absolutely an opportunity. It will allow us to do things we never imagined. Is it perceived, in the short term, as a threat? Absolutely. Our job at NAMM is to help our members get ahead and provide as much opportunity as possible to innovate.”

The 2024 NAMM Show

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday

Where: Anaheim Convention Center, 800 West Katella Ave., Anaheim

Tickets: $150 for a general attendee and $75 for NAMM Member badges for a four-day pass at namm.org/thenammshow/attend. NAMM+ digital access only is $35, with some virtual costing extra at namm.org/thenammshow/namm-show-plus.

Phone: (760) 438-8001

Online: namm.org/thenammshow/attend

NAMM at a glance

Full name: National Association of Music Merchants

Founded: 1901

Headquarters: Carlsbad, California

Membership: More than 15,400 global member companies and individual professionals with a global workforce of over 475,000 employees 7,000 active member companies from 120 countries and territories, as well as musicians, pro audio and live sound professionals, music educators, entertainment technology professionals, concert touring and staging professionals, venue and studio representatives, houses of worship performers and operators, music influencers and content producers, and theme park operators.

Annual trade show: Jaunary at the Anaheim Convention Center

Total number of employees: 61

Mission statement: “To strengthen the music products industry and promote
the pleasures and benefits of making music.”

Did you know? NAMM operates the Museum of Making Music at its Carlsbad headquarters, where it also regularly presents concerts, including a Feb. 9 concert by country-music guitar great Albert Lee. The museum’s current exhibit, “MIDI@40: Artistry, Inclusivity, Connectivity,” explores the history of MIDI (short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface).