John Mlynczak: Why NAMM Still Matters in 2026
NAMM's president and CEO joins us to discuss the shift from traditional retail to influencer-driven content creation in the music industry and why preparing students to thrive in the future matters more than teaching techniques.
We’re putting The Tonearm’s needle on John Mlynczak, President and CEO of the National Association of Music Merchants.
NAMM is the trade association for the music, sound, and event industries. Basically, NAMM represents the companies that make the tools your favorite music artists use to create their work.
John has spent years at Hal Leonard and PreSonus Audio, where music education meets technology. He built curricula, managed platforms, and taught teachers how to use tech in their classrooms.
Now he runs an organization that’s rethinking what a trade show means when the music industry has gone digital. NAMM just celebrated its 125th anniversary, but John isn’t interested in nostalgia. He’s asking harder questions about how people discover instruments, how they learn to play them, and why gathering in person still matters when you can order anything online. The NAMM Show draws tens of thousands of people to Anaheim every January (this January 20–24, to be exact), and the numbers behind those crowds tell a story about content, influence, and how musicians connect with gear today.
We talk about John’s shift from teaching in Louisiana to shaping industry strategy, why music advocacy needs to be offensive rather than defensive, and what happens when trade shows have to prove their value in real time.
Dig Deeper
• Visit NAMM at namm.org and follow on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• John Mlynczak’s NAMM Profile
• The NAMM Show 2026 – January 23–25, Anaheim, California
• NAMM Show Registration and App Information
Educational Background and Previous Roles:
• Virginia Commonwealth University – Bachelor of Music Education
• Louisiana State University – Master’s degrees in Music Performance and Education Leadership
• Hal Leonard – Music publishing and education
• PreSonus Audio – Audio technology and recording equipment
• Noteflight – Online music notation software
Music Education Organizations:
• Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME)
• Massachusetts Music Educators Association (MMEA)
• NAMM Foundation
• SupportMusic Coalition
• NAfME (National Association for Music Education)
Music Technology Tools Mentioned:
• GarageBand – Apple’s music creation software
• Cubase – Digital audio workstation
• Essential Elements Interactive – Music education platform
NAMM Events and Awards:
• She Rocks Awards – Celebrating women in music
• Parnelli Awards – Honoring live event professionals
• NAMM U – Educational programming and resources
Performance Groups:
• MetWinds – John’s current performance ensemble
Musical Reference:
• Alexander Arutiunian Trumpet Concerto – The piece John performed as a cocky freshman
Industry Research and Reports:
• NAMM Industry Insights – Music products industry data
• Trade Show Executive – Conference John mentioned attending
(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Lawrence Peryer: When did you first see how performing and teaching and technology could all work together? Does that go back to your student days, or did that reveal itself to you later?
John Mlynczak: I know exactly when I saw it. I was a freshman, second semester. I was the hotshot trumpet player in college. I was first chair, so obviously I was the best and knew everything. I loved that I had my piccolo trumpet so I could play higher, faster, louder, and sharper than everyone. I mean, I had it all figured out. I'm eighteen years old and in control of the world, and I had a professor sit me down. Actually, a trombone professor called me into his office and said, "Hey, I want to give you a lesson." And I'm like, what? You're a trombone professor. What are you possibly going to teach me about the piccolo trumpet? I am first chair. I was every cocky trumpet player you could ever imagine. If I could go back in time and find the younger version of myself and say, "Stop, don't be that way." But you learn a lot through that.
So he sits me down and he records me. He says, "Play your solo." I had played a recital for the Tuesday recital at the school, and I thought I was amazing. He sits me down and he records me and he plays it back half tempo, slows it down half speed, so it's down an octave. And what I heard in my head as a trumpet player—it was the Arutiunian concerto. (sings) I sounded beautiful. I'm light, I'm articulate. It sounded like half tempo it sounded like Charlie Brown's parents were drunk and high having an argument. It was like (makes odd vocalizations). And I'm like, "That sounds horrible." He's like, "Do you hear that? Every articulation has this pop, and then the air compresses and then the note goes flat at the end. Listen again." (makes more odd vocalizations) And I'm like, "What? Who's going to record me and play me back half tempo?" I was such a cocky little trumpet player. And he looks at me and he says, "John, I have to play it back half speed so you can hear what we hear all the time. As your professors, your ears don't hear it."
So you ask about a moment of performance, technology, and teaching locked together. Technology will help me learn to be a better performer and train my ears. So I went out that day—this was 2001, 2002—and I bought a little Sony MiniDisc recorder, a little microphone, six hundred batteries because that microphone burned through a battery in about an hour. I would start practicing, doing nothing but recording myself and listening. I'd put the mini disc in the back of the hall and play and listen, and it just transformed immediately. We have to use technology as a teaching tool to make ourselves better and use that feedback loop.
Lawrence: That's phenomenal, and it foreshadows a lot of the other themes I want to probe with you in a few minutes. The related question that I wanted to ask you: that's your personal epiphany moment. I'm curious what your years as an educator taught you. How do students actually learn music? What did you observe there? Because your answer there sort of illustrates one way—you can learn what's on the paper, you can slow down other people's solos or transcribe and all that other stuff, but that was a pretty powerful moment. There was a tool missing there for you. I'm curious what you've learned about how students actually learn.
John: Everyone learns differently. Most people don't learn by a teacher standing in front of them telling them what they need to do. They learn by a teacher inspiring them to want to have the drive to go figure out how they learn and to see the successes of that. As an educator, I realized very quickly that it's not my job to say, "You're flat, you're sharp, play this, push in, pull out, play." It's a matter of inspiring students to understand why practice. Not because you have to do a practice record your parents have to sign for a grade. How do you motivate them? Positive reinforcement. Praise. Get them on stage. Get them that bug of music making. Give them tools. I was lucky to be teaching at a time where it was really easy to use technology as a tool—record yourself and listen and see how great that is, and share it with a friend and get feedback.
That's really what it came down to: inspiring students to want to learn, but then use every tool available so they can teach themselves and find feedback loops and find ways of improvement when they're on their own without a teacher next to them at all times.
Lawrence: Related to that, could you tell me a little bit about the curriculum and the coursework that you created in Louisiana around music and technology?
John: I had gotten into recording for personal reasons, but then I realized I know how to record and set up microphones. I was recording ensembles and recording solo and piano. It was kind of a side gig because as a musician, we do twenty side gigs—that's the way you do it. When I started teaching, I was teaching band, choir, elementary, all of the normal things and lessons after school. But I wanted to start teaching recording. So I started thinking I was teaching how to record. I brought in my microphones, my interface, my computer, my Cubase, all that stuff. But what happened was the students were so interested in creating music. They would sit at my computer and start pulling in loops and stuff.
The curriculum I started teaching organically was just more music creation. I thought I was starting by teaching how technology works: this is a preamp, this is a microphone. What happened is they just wanted to create music, and they had the tools to do so. We were lucky enough to have laptop carts, and here we are in 2008, 2009, and you have GarageBand standard on Mac laptops. So I'm like, "Hey, I can just get the laptop cart and everyone can have a creation tool. Let's drag loops and let's do ABA form." That's where the curriculum really evolved around what the kids really loved to do. I also learned that giving them space—giving people space to just create—accelerated that.
It ended up, after probably—I mean, everything takes three years—after the third year, I had really fallen into what in education was called project-based learning. PBL was all the thing, and it was right. But what it really was is I would give a two-week project: make a song with this sound or so many sounds or something that inspires kids, and just give them the freedom to go and play in a sandbox and get messy. Creativity is messy. The curriculum evolved out of that.
The biggest trick for me, which made me a presenter for technology all over, was how to assess technology. For me, as a musician, we know how to assess. You count how many wrong notes you had in your jury. You missed a note, you didn't play this, you didn't do this. It's ticking off mistakes, which by the way is not really a great way to motivate anyone to do something. We're counting your mistakes. Don't mess up. Hate yourself when you do it in the moment. That's the kind of thing that gets in your head as a performer. In creativity, you can't do that. You've got to let people just emote and have fun and play. Figuring out how to assess something that a student worked on for two weeks and do it in a really positive way that's not like, "Well, you didn't use three tracks," or "This note doesn't fit"—but really positively praise and get them to keep wanting to put out work that clicked for me. So it was assessment, project-based, and then that just took off.
Lawrence: What did you mean when you said everything takes three years?
John: They always say when you're trying something new, the first year you're trying it the way you think you're doing it, and then you're listening. The first year of anything, any big initiative, you should be listening. The first year you should have a hypothesis, but just listen. The second year you test, you try. Then the third year you really have an idea of how it's going to work. Building a curriculum: first year I tried to do it my way. I'm going to teach you everything I know about recording and technology and how it works. Then I realized, well, the kids actually want to do this. So the second year I start experimenting: what do you want to do? Letting the kids kind of drive it organically, figuring out some things. By the third year it's like, "Ah, I now see how this is going to work. Let me implement it a different way." And it starts to take off. Same with the evolution—once we get into the NAMM side, it's the same thing. I'm in my third year at NAMM, and it's the same thing, just being patient.
Lawrence: Tell me a little bit about that tension point when the technology is really serving music education versus when it's getting in the way. It's just a thing, it's a bell or a whistle. It's not really a tool in the toolkit.
John: There's definitely, with technology and even with gear as a musician, sometimes we get so gear focused. As a trumpet player, everyone has the box of mouthpieces. You collect all this gear. I think technology can do the same thing where it's, "I need these plugins," or "I have to figure out how this works," or we start creating music out of just trying to use a tool instead of just using our ears and saying, "I want to make something that sounds really good, and I don't actually have to use eighty effects on this track. I don't have to use every possible plugin. I just need to make something that sounds good." To me, there's always been an arc where the pendulum swings way too far—I'm using every piece of tech I possibly can. And then you realize people just like good music. That's just a learning experience I think we all have.
Lawrence: It's interesting. I speak to a lot of people either who are educators or are artists who have an "air quotes" day job as an educator because it's part of what you do, or people who are working in more mission-based roles around music education. There really seems to be a shift over the last, let's call it roughly twenty years, maybe a little less: just getting kids up and running and playing. When I was a kid, when I took piano lessons, I don't think I was allowed to touch the piano for a year, maybe more. I had to sit there with the book and draw notes, and it was zero fun. (laughter) And now it seems to be much more about put instruments in the kids' hands, get them making noise.
John: Yes. There are two reasons for that. One is we're competing with the internet. We're competing with instant gratification. You pick up a video game, you're off and running. You're doing it. There are so many other things that students can do these days that have instant gratification. Trying to say, "Sit down and learn all this theory and practice this very rigid technique before you can go to your friends"—and spend years before you can go to your friends and say, "Look, I can play a song"—we just can't compete in that world. We're going to lose music makers.
I think one thing is just the evolution of competing with instant gratification. We've realized that if we just get that kid to learn a song and then go to other friends and play a song and they say, "Wow, that's cool," then they'll come back and say, "I want to learn more songs." Well, great. While we learn more songs, let me show you this technique that's going to help you do that. My second point: I think we've also learned that getting people going quickly and getting them out there and just experiencing the love and joy of something—because we as musicians and as our industry are passion driven. Same with fitness. If you're a runner or you like to work out, you have to get up and hit the pavement every day. You have to tell yourself, "I want to do this today." Same with music. I have to want to play, I have to want to create. So we need to drive that in kids sooner because if we do nothing in education but just plant "I want to create every day," then the adult's going to create every day.
You can look really long term in some ways, and we've seen this in other countries, especially in China right now. We spent generations forcing music very rigidly. Now when they're not forced to play music, what do they do? "Oh, thank God I don't have to do that anymore because that was forced and strenuous." I think it's a good lesson to get out there and just focus on doing.
I'll tell you a funny story. My other passion is sailing, and I started teaching sailing—I'm such a teacher at heart. I was teaching, and there were a bunch of instructors who would go out and we'd all take a group. I realized that people always wanted me to be their teacher, and my students were always happy. I realized that we'd all go out, I'd be on the boat, and we'd be out for ten minutes, we're on the water, and everyone else is back at the dock. "Okay, this is a shroud and this is a halyard and this line does this, and here's how to use the winch." They're overexplaining every component. I'm just like, "All right, let's go sailing. We'll figure it out as we go. Let's just get on the water. Feel the air, catch the bug." I learned that being a music teacher. It's the same thing as teaching: get out there, catch the bug, find the love of what you're doing, and then you create a thirst for knowledge. And then everyone's like, "Cool, I love this. Tell me how that thing works. Tell me how to play it this way."
Lawrence: I think we all know the narrative of music and arts education being under such pressure in this country. But there are all these—and this isn't just limited to music and the arts—but there are all these new ways to learn, whether it's YouTube or these learning platforms that you could pay a monthly fee for and get master classes and so much peer learning through online communities. I'm wondering, how does that make you think? I understand that none of it can replace one form of learning, may not replace another, but I'm curious how you think about what's it like and what are the opportunities for a student now who wants to learn an instrument. Are we in a good place because of those other things, or are we still fundamentally—are we losing something because of cuts and those other pressures?
John: There are two questions here. One is just the idea of cutting music or cutting the arts and what we shouldn't be doing in school. But I firmly believe, first of all, that we should be using every tool imaginable, every tool at our disposal. We should be exposing students to it. What we should be really teaching—and I even go as high level as just education in general, not just music education—especially today, but I think this existed five decades ago: as fast as technology and tools move, we're preparing students to thrive in a world that doesn't exist yet.
The college students today did not have AI when they were at elementary school and middle school, or maybe even high school. They're now graduating college. They're going into a workforce trying to figure out how to use tools that didn't exist their entire education career. And that's not changing. That's going to be the future. I think education's sole purpose—back to motivating people—we as a society, I firmly believe, need to think of education as creating better humans, creating strong social skills, giving people the tools and ability to adapt and learn how they learn, and teaching them how to embrace new tools in every possible way, knowing that they're going to leave our classrooms, leave our colleges, have to go out in a workforce and adapt and keep learning things that we didn't have.
I do think when teachers change the dates on the syllabus or get stuck—"I've been doing this for ten years"—it's like, no, you might have done it once and repeated it for nine, but you haven't actually been doing it for ten years. I think we have to embrace that. That's just the reality of the world we live in.
Lawrence: What's the role of curiosity in all that? Both from the teacher's point of view and—your example about just changing the date on the syllabus really strikes me. The teachers have to be curious and be continually learning as well as building that mindset in our workforce and our students.
John: I absolutely think so. I think education—and back to cutting the arts—of course NAMM, and I've done advocacy my whole life, and NAMM does a ton of that too. We have data and research about music to the brain, and music is social-emotional. You've got all the data that demonstrates what we know as musicians: music does have so many superpowers about making you a better person, and kindness goes—all of that.
But at the end of the day, we should be educating better humans. We want to make the next generation better humans than us. I think that's the goal of society. And right now especially, we're at each other. We're divided. We're not really good humans right now. I mean, adults—if you've been on social media, if you watch the news—at the end of the day, we can debate facts and opinions and political sides and all that, but we have to be good humans and we have to think creatively and respect each other. I think that's one thing that the arts embody. Playing in a musical ensemble, you have to be a good human. You have to respect someone, you have to have skills. You have to be motivated to practice. You have to show up and support your team. Those are the things that I think should be fundamental to educating a society.
Lawrence: On the music advocacy side, so much of the work is about playing defense. We have to protect these programs. We have to fight these budget cuts. I'm curious whether there are examples either at NAMM or other parts of your professional life—is there an offensive role? How do we go on the offensive on behalf of arts and education and that type of literacy?
John: One hundred percent. I think advocacy has to be offensive the entire time. To your point, just constantly getting out there and talking about—when I did advocacy presentations, because I'd go around the states teaching how to advocate—for me it's always about it starts with the joy and pleasure and benefits of creating and experiencing music because that's what we feel all the time. The defensive tactics are, "Oh, but wait, the test scores are improving. Oh, but wait." It's that idea that this is kind of a product of early two thousands, No Child Left Behind, when everything went to test scores and we got defensive on it.
But you're right, we have to constantly promote the joy and pleasures of playing music and get out there even when times are good. Because that's the thing—I've said this to teachers before, in clinics to educators: when do you advocate? And they're like, "Oh, well, when our numbers go down or when our job's on the line." I say, no, you advocate every day. Advocacy is every day. Everything you do is advocacy. That's what's really important.
I used to tell my students in class—this was shameless, but it worked like a charm—"When you get in your car today, you get home from school, your parents are going to say, 'How was school?' and you're probably going to say, 'Fine.' Don't say 'fine.' Tell them about this moment you just had in music class. Did this feel good playing this thing? Was that really fun? When your parents ask, 'How was your day?' tell them about how good this moment felt." I'd tell my students that all the time, and the parents are like, "Oh my God, all I hear about is how great music is." Yeah, because I told the kid to tell you. That's an example of going on the offensive. That everyday moment matters so much because if all we do is grab the pitchforks and storm the castle with data when budget cuts are coming down the line, we're not actually advocating for music making in the world. We're just advocating for our jobs.
Lawrence: I love that example of turning the children into little propaganda machines. (laughter)
John: They'll say anything. If anything about kids, they'll actually say anything you tell them to. I'll tell you another example that worked like a charm too. At the end of a concert, the parents would come at the end of the band concert—you'd have one every semester—and they'd say, "That was so amazing. I had no idea my student could do that." They'd go on, and I'd say, "Oh my gosh, thank you so much. But you know what? I get to hear your kid every day, so you don't have to tell me. Will you tell me what you just said with that much passion? Will you tell the principal that? Because the principal's not in there every day. Will you go to the school board and say that?"
I'd flip that every time. I'd say, "You don't have to tell me how great your kids are. I get to work with them every day. You just heard one concert. Go tell someone that's not in the classroom and didn't hear this concert what you just experienced." I'd say that every time immediately. The principal's like, "Oh my God, I got seven parent emails already about this concert." And guess what? The principal came to the next concert.
Lawrence: It's really powerful, and it creates a culture and an environment of enthusiasm. You're enlisting people in the cause, basically.
John: Exactly. It's influencer marketing 101. It's really what it is.
Lawrence: A lot of what we've talked about so far has to do with sort of applying creative thinking in different ways—in education, in advocacy, in communication. The music industry broadly, and of course, even retail has changed so much. It's trite to even say it, but in your universe, you look at things like the major retailers or the major chains. You look at something like Guitar Center and their trials and tribulations over the years, the shift from physical to online. I think about being a kid and there were independent guitar stores—not even just little storefronts, but massive places that were locally owned by a guy. I think back on it now and think, man, how did that guitar store have all that inventory in there? We have the direct-to-consumer model that manufacturers and retailers are going at. What does that mean for NAMM's role and evolution? Why does the ecosystem need to go buy plane tickets, get on a plane, go to Anaheim and get together? What's the role of NAMM broadly, and what's the role of coming together?
John: I love this question. I want to define NAMM as the association and the NAMM Show as the trade show—two areas here. The first part, what you were saying: we at NAMM are going to celebrate 125 years next year. Since 1901, the longest national trade organization. We're very proud of that. It's no surprise that music and the music industry and the power of music is one of the longest running trade associations.
You talk about all the evolution, all that's in the middle. I think about NAMM—our mission is to strengthen the music products industry and promote the pleasure and benefits of making music. We look at that mission because any nonprofit, any good nonprofit is absolutely mission driven. All the evolution, whether it's the phone book or the first web page, or now 50 percent of sales at least being online and all the direct-to-consumer and direct-to-consumer brands—all of that's somewhere in the middle.
The middle evolves. What's at the ends is where you keep your eye on the prize. One is we're making musical products that people want and desire to play. And then at the very end of that is people desire to play music and want to play these products and get out there. If you keep your eyes on that prize and you look back at our 125-year history at NAMM, the middle has changed the way that—and it will keep evolving. But what we need to do is make sure that we are helping our members, our companies evolve and adapt to keep their eyes on that end goal, which is more people playing music and using products and creating music with it. Not become roadblocks of like, "Oh, channel roadblocks"—"No, it has to be bought this way," or "It has to be learned this way," or "It has to be experienced that way." At some point, we become our own enemies.
Yes, that does mean there's an evolution. We're at a massive period of consolidation. Specialty—the big box retailers are struggling, and that's not just in our industry. You look at any department store. The average department store where you get a little bit of everything and a really big, expensive real estate isn't really—I mean, shopping malls are no more. What you have is specialty and niche. You have all these very specialty shops. Same thing in our industry. Specialty shops, local—those are thriving at a certain level. But entry-level music making, a lot of it's a YouTube video and an online sale. But the important thing is that we are working with companies and driving evolution and creativity to say, "How do we make sure that people who want to watch YouTube want to play music? How do we just keep that going?" Because that's the most important thing that we need to drive.
I think that's NAMM as an association: one thing we do is we talk to a lot of companies. As we think about member benefits, research data, best practices, what one company's doing—our members are really passionate about sharing. Our members love to get up. That's what I love about our industry. Retailers will share their best practices with other retailers. And in an online world, we're all competitors, but everyone has this sense of we just want more music makers. That's a really exciting thing about NAMM: keeping your eyes on that we need to make sure that people are playing music and products are getting to them and not get hung up on the how in the middle. Let that evolve as needed.
But to your point about the NAMM Show, that's the question: what's the purpose of a trade show in 2026? And again, the same answer. You look at the purpose of a trade show—trade shows are actually thriving. I'm going to the Trade Show Executive conference next week, and we're the top one hundred trade shows around the country. We will see data: trade shows as a model, people want to get together. They want to experience shared interests. People want to gather. That is just human fact. We want to gather, we want to express ourselves with art and music. That is as ancient as time.
But what's evolved is what needs to evolve in the trade show is what the specific ROI is. If a trade show is only about the one time of year—back before the internet, a trade show was the one time of year where you could set up products, find retail companies to buy your products, write orders, press hard to get through all four carbon copies. "You take the yellow, I'll take the white." That type of thing. That's over. Those days are over.
But the value of a trade show—why do people want to gather? It's still about audience engagement and audience excitement. It's still about one plus one equals three, but the question is, who are the one plus one? The idea when I hear "trade shows are dead," it's like, well, the NAMM Show is not the only time all year that people can write one order or find a new retailer or see a product. That concept of the trade show is long gone, even pre-COVID.
But what is important and what we keep our eyes on is why does this audience want to see this audience. We look at the NAMM Show as audience value, figuring out why does an exhibitor want to see their retail or their suppliers or their distributors or their endorsed artists or new artists or social influencers or educators. What's the value in each of those chains, and how do we make sure that that person showing that product gets the value from each? That's where the NAMM Show has really thrived. That's why the NAMM Show continues to be relevant and exciting, and companies are still investing a lot. Because what they're getting is not just one retail audience but multiple audiences. The challenge for us as the NAMM Show organizers is we need to make sure that the value that's slightly different for each audience is there and that it's communicated.
Lawrence: To the extent that you know—and you may not given the length of your tenure so far—if I could go back in time, let's say in twenty-five-year intervals all the way back to 1901, would I see a change in the makeup of the audience at NAMM? Like the mix of stakeholders? What's that? What's the stakeholder mix look like today?
John: Oh yeah, you would absolutely. It's funny, we look at the mix constantly—the pie chart of who's at NAMM. Again, you go back—we'll go back to 1950 because we have those shows. I mean, it was very much retail and supplier and distributor. I mean, that was it. It was pure trade. Then you get the rise of more suppliers, then international starts to grow. Eighties, nineties, you got international there. That's why the winter—the winter market show, we had a summer market and a winter market. That's what NAMM was sixty, seventy-five years ago. The summer show was bigger than the winter show. It was summers in Chicago. But as international became stronger, you start international growth, and all of a sudden the Anaheim show becomes bigger because you have more international audience. Then you have more artists coming in and more promoting products, and that really drove it.
January became a super important time because artists are off the road, and it's a good time for the industry to travel after Q4. So eventually that evolution—now you're in the early two thousands. The evolution of audience growth in 2010 to 2020 was also this crossroads strategy in NAMM. We know we are MI, but what about pro audio? What about live sound? What about touring? What about event safety? That was the growth of what we, in a real estate standpoint, called the ACC North, the North Hall, where you have all the pro audio, live sound, speakers. But that was a huge boom. We need to own the stage, not just the instrument and the accessory. We want the stage at NAMM. That's when you have sound, lights, all of that. That was a big boom.
The boom we're having now is influencers, the entire world of people are there to capture a product and tell the entire world what this product is and how it works. This massive growth—it's the trade show evolution to your question about twenty-five-year increments. It's completely audience evolution. But the fundamental—that's why I get kind of defensive when people like, "Oh, trade shows are dead." It's like, no, no, no, no. The traditional ROI from twenty-five years ago is different than the ROI today.
People want to gather. Trade shows are alive and thriving, but trade shows that evolve and understand who is at the show and who wants to gather and what they get from each other—that's why trade shows thrive. That's our biggest audience right now. This whole influencer, creator area is key. Back to your evolution in the world, in an online world, I have the opportunity, a really gracious opportunity, to give a presentation at the Trade Show Executive Conference next week on this.
Our evolution is, why exhibit at the NAMM Show? We don't sell booths. We've evolved to say we don't think about selling booths. That's real estate, that's a tape measure and carpet. We sell brand experiences. That's what we sell. Brand experiences. People want their brand to be experienced by their suppliers, their buyers, their retailers, influencers, artists. They want their brand to be experienced. What we generate—we don't generate orders. I mean, people do write orders at the NAMM Show, we know that, but they can write orders all year round too. We generate brand demand. That's what we focus on. We sell brand experiences and we generate brand demand.
The way we've done that the past three years is focusing on how many actual views of content around products have been generated from the NAMM Show. In 2023, that was about 9.5 million views of content. In 2024, that was just over 20 million views of content. In 2025, we generated 39.4 million views of content created around products at the NAMM Show. That's brand demand. That's brand experience.
Lawrence: I'm curious about how the pandemic and the virtualization of so much impacted NAMM. I feel like a lot of those statistics you just quoted may speak to the fact that there's more consumption in online audience. Was there anything that NAMM took through, how it had to adapt during the pandemic years that actually stuck? Was there something valuable that came out of that, or was it really like, we just need to rush to get back to Anaheim?
John: I do think the initial, in the moment of—I call it pandemic panic. I mean, we went through some stuff. I remember like two weeks flatten the curve, and next thing you know, we're in lines getting shots at stadiums. There's just a weird time for everyone. So living through it, it was like, we just got to get back to normal. Remember the "back to normal" days? So yes, the rush to get back to January Anaheim was in the moment.
But to your point, what we learned was so valuable. Not having the trade show in 2021 and then having to move it based on California's gathering dates throughout 2022 and 2023—it really forced us. When people took the NAMM Show out of their budgets and out of—we skipped that year. It immediately, for the first time in decades, we had to answer the questions in industry: why? Why add this expense? Why come? Versus "Why do it again?" Because everyone—the NAMM Show is great. Everyone that leaves the NAMM Show can't wait for the next NAMM Show. That's the beautiful thing. The NAMM Show is so much fun. But when we took that away, and what it forced our organization to do is have to answer that question: why come to the NAMM Show? "Well, because the last one was so great." We don't have that anymore. So what is great about it? We were able to go and say, even down to the detail, every single thing we do, why does it have value? Who does it have value for? We have learned so much.
It's funny, the pandemic, like a lot of things, it just accelerated, exposed what already existed. And in a lot of ways, I mean, the pandemic had a lot of bad and a lot of unhealthy—a lot of sick folks and a lot of people died from COVID. It's a horrible thing. I don't want to say this lightly that the pandemic helped, but in one way, the pandemic jammed us through in two years something that probably would have taken ten years if we didn't have that sort of catalyst for forced reflection and change.
I'll give you one example. During the pandemic, Pelotons and guitars, baby. The two things that boosted the most: Pelotons and guitars and keyboards. You were at home. Online learning. Retail stores were closed. The online influencer—musicians are not gigging. So they start doing product—the boom of the entire—all that happened during COVID. Out of COVID, we're like, "Hey, we have all these influencers now. We need to make a new badge type. We need to make a new badge category. We have a media badge, but that's not media." So we went through and started labeling all this.
What we found is as people started adapting to the new badges, these people had been at the NAMM Show in 2017, 2018, 2019. These content creators have always been at the NAMM Show, and in some ways they've always been using the NAMM Show to create content. We never knew it was so important to create a dedicated audience around them and really spotlight the power of that as one of those key ROI audiences until it all got accelerated during COVID. And then we realized, "Oh, we've got to do this." But by the way, it was already happening for several years, but we just didn't know it or see it.
Lawrence: As you sit down and you work with the team and you have this run-up to 2026, if you could sort of wave a wand and change something about how—not necessarily NAMM works, but how the industry gathers or how learning happens, or how conducting business happens—what would be a change you would love to see happen that you would love to effectuate that would ultimately be something that people didn't even know they needed, like an improvement that nobody's asking for?
John: I love that question. That is not a clumsy question at all. One of the challenges with our product—you know this—we're a product that happens five days a year, once a year. We have evolved and, based on feedback, we have so much happening now that we've tested. Back to three years: tested in 2024, refined in 2025. Now we know. This is what people are asking for in 2026. But again, it might take ten years for our industry as a whole to see this because it might take them ten NAMM Shows to grab it.
So if I could wave a wand, I would like to get seventy-five thousand people in a room and say, "Listen, here's where it is." Kind of force that. If they could go to a NAMM Show a week for ten weeks in a row, they would see the evolution and they would get around and see all the change. But we're in one-year increments. So I'd love to wave the wand and say, NAMM is a five-day experience, three days of exhibits—Thursday, Friday, Saturday—but Tuesday, Wednesday, this year especially, we're kicking off with intense education sessions, networking, retail awards, day of service. There are things happening. When you come to Anaheim, the first thing, the experience we've curated now: gather and let's start educating ourselves before the hall opens.
Let's start working on half-day and full-day summits, which we're offering this year. We have specific content available for every audience. For retail, it's financial and marketing. For manufacturers, we have marketing summits. For pro audio, we have live sound training. We have curated for music educators. We have a music education experience. Every audience has a curated track for them. Start by learning. This is a curated five-day event. You learn, you gather, you meet folks, you network. So when the hall opens Thursday morning, you are ready to go. And then it is product meeting their education. There's a really awesome curated experience there.
And then embrace the amount of music making that happens at the NAMM Show. I mean, we have 180 bands at NAMM outside of just what happens on the main Yamaha stage. At night, we have all these events like Parnelli's and She Rocks. There are concerts—also come and just cleanse your soul with the power of music making in our industry and artists. Take it all in.
Because I think sometimes people look at it, especially in the industry side, as a business transaction. Got to go to NAMM, got to set my appointments, got to keep my meetings. And it goes fast. But it's soul refreshing to hear music, to see young people come in, to see that joy. Take it in as a five-day curated experience. That's what I'd love to wave the wand for.
And if I can double wave the wand, I love our industry so much. I love our industry, and I recognize that we are in January. So Q4 is the busiest time for everyone with sales and holidays and everything else, and companies spend six months preparing for the NAMM Show. So I know it's a super busy time. We have the NAMM Show map's going to be released next week. The brand-new app's going to be released in the next two weeks. By November, you'll be able to go in, register for the show, see all the sessions, make your plan, look at all the exhibitors, prepare early, make a plan early. We're putting all this information out early.
We get probably 40 percent of our registrations between January 2 and January 20. And I get it, but do you know how hard it is for our entire staff trying to prepare for a NAMM Show when customer service spikes because everyone wakes up last minute like, "Oh, I didn't even renew my membership in November. Can you help me?"
Lawrence: Does the January date—is it still the right date in the modern world?
John: Yes. It absolutely is. Especially the later January, like third or fourth week, and we've been sticking to that later in January piece. We want to stay right before the Grammys. There's a real power in being "NAMM week before Grammy week." That back-to-back is really working, especially with the amount of artists that come in. Now this year with the Super Bowl right after that, you have artists that are camping in California for three weeks. NAMM, Grammy, Super Bowl. So that works. Live touring has taken a break after all the holiday. It's a good time for retail. So it's the right time, it really is. Just getting ahead. I think that's what would really help us and help our team.
There's so much to take advantage of. If you walk into the NAMM Show on Tuesday and you haven't even looked at the map or the schedule yet, you're going to be overwhelmed.
Lawrence: I would imagine you're at a deficit. You have a very specific background—education, working in music technology companies and with products. What do you think that your hiring says about how the governing body for NAMM views the future and what they thought they needed?
John: I can tell you for sure because I was in those interviews for probably nine months. It was an extraneous process. I actually loved the hiring process. It was in-depth, it was lots of conversations. Hours and hours and hours, I mean months. The interview process was all about what does NAMM need post-COVID. It was definitely a comment, and so they recognized, you know, education evolution. Think about what the next thing's going to be. Embrace technology in a different time.
I will admit, I might not be the person that's best for this job, but in this time I think I am. I think that worked out really well, and I really liked the conversation. I can tell you for sure from the board, from our executive committee, even from our staff internally, we all embrace this idea of let's try. And we're doing it in a big way. I mean, under the hood you'll see it at the NAMM Show this year. But to no surprise, we have spent the last year completely reinventing our technology at NAMM.
When you go to register for the show, you'll see a brand-new namm.org dashboard, a profile for everyone, a company profile, attaching employees to their company, recognizing that companies and employees are all attached in our world so we know who they are. And then a new registration system, a new app, a new map, and all of these work together in a way that allows us to create a really good experience for everyone, but also us to have data. We've built a world now where we can see who is an employee of this company versus who are they inviting as an artist. Who are their qualified attendees? How do these people add value to each other? How many people who indicate they play guitar went and saw this? How many educators saw that? We want to be able to look at that in a really powerful way.
The board really embraced that. That was part of the vision. And again, it takes three years to get there, and this is the beginning of year three. But we have some—I mean, people will see all new systems this year.
Lawrence: Yeah. I understand that the technology product development and rollout is not measured in weeks.
John: But we're set up—we're now set up for the next two decades, easy. The ability for us to use flexible automations—I really, and the team has embraced it so much, which I'm really excited about—so this transformation of NAMM, thinking about the next two decades ahead. We should be so highly automated and excited. The energy of the NAMM Show should last all year.
Someone who went to the NAMM Show—with all this available with AI and everything else, we have these vision statements like you attended the NAMM Show. Let's say you went to five sessions on AI marketing. We can look at the most popular sessions at the NAMM Show, and that drives our online content plan for the rest of the year, so then we can say, "Hey, this is what people want to hear. Let's do an online NAMM U virtual webinar on the latest and greatest of AI marketing tools." And let me invite everyone at the NAMM Show to go watch that based on their preferences.
Imagine two years from now, I'm giving you a hint: logging into namm.org and having "Hey, recommended content for you. Hey, did you know this?" What about connecting to people? "Hey, you should connect with these other people because they share"—who should I know in the industry? All of these tools exist, and we've built the data structure now to create a world of endless possibilities in the future.
Lawrence: That's incredible. Something you told me at the beginning is informing the way I want to end our time together. You kind of talked about that brash, headstrong, eighteen-year-old trumpet player. From where you sit now, what would you go back and tell that young man? What's the most important thing that you could be telling him to prepare himself for where you are now?
John: I know exactly the answer here. We're built on mentors and mistakes. Mistakes are okay if you learn from them, and with good mentors around, they sort of guide you through it. When you're young and you're getting a lot of information from teachers, from other people with experience, do not underestimate or devalue experience. Knowledge is great, studying the book, but knowledge without experience—there's a chemical bond. As a young, the hotshot egotistical people of the world, I think it's a matter of they have a ton of knowledge, but they don't have the experience necessarily to grasp.
There's something powerful about that because there are things that have occurred to me in my twenties and thirties that I'm like, "Aha, that's what that person was talking about ten years ago." I didn't understand that at the time because I didn't have a life experience to attach that to. But now I do, and I wish I would've learned that quicker. Save everything. If you hear something, don't say, "Oh, that doesn't make any sense. I know better." No, you just don't. You might not have the lived experience yet to really grasp what that means. Put it in the bank, put every piece of knowledge—I'd go back to my own self and say, if it makes sense, use it. If it doesn't make sense, save it because one day it will make sense again.
I think for me, as an evolution of a leader, when I have moments today—and I'm so lucky in my job to have a million people tell me what they think I should be, could be, and wouldn't be doing. And I mean that. I'm in a job where everyone has an opinion about what I should and couldn't be doing, and I embrace that. If I hear something I disagree with, I go back to my younger self and say, "You know what? I want to put that in the bank because maybe I don't understand that yet. Or maybe it's from a different time." But I don't blow off things I hear that I don't think make sense because I have enough understanding now that I wish I had when I was younger to say, save it, put it in the bank because it might make sense for NAMM in five years, or maybe I'll share it with someone else that has an experience.
That's the number one advice I give to every young person: put every piece of knowledge in the bank and just wait for a lived experience and see where those two click.
Lawrence: It's funny, but as I gear up to let you go, it doesn't sound boring.
John: It's so much fun. It's so much fun. This industry, the people, the passion, it's so much fun. You're right, it's always like, people are like, "What do you do when you're not the NAMM Show?" Geez. We are nonstop all year. In fact, the NAMM Show is like, "Oh, we can just focus on one thing this week."
Lawrence: On the supplier side, what's the biggest exploding category right now?
John: We just put the global report out. Right now it's live touring. Anything around live touring—stage keyboards, even some synths are coming back. Any thing that's used on stage, electronic music, pro audio touring is just still so strong. All the categories around live touring are thriving. And even with all the tariffs and everything that's going on—because that's a whole other area we're deeply invested in policy and everything there—but even that's a category that even with tariffs and increases and all of that, it still thrives because the demand outweighs the struggles of the costs.
President and CEO
John Mlynczak has an extensive range of experiences in the music industry, music education, technology and leadership. John currently serves as the President and CEO of NAMM.
Prior to NAMM, John served as Vice President of Music Education & Technology at Hal Leonard, where he oversaw worldwide education market strategy, managed Noteflight, Essential Elements Interactive, and Essential Elements Music Class, and collaborated on all music education technology related initiatives for Hal Leonard. Previously, he was Managing Director of Noteflight and he is the immediate Past-President of the Technology Institute of Music Educators (TI:ME).
Mr. Mlynczak has taught online graduate courses at VanderCook College, served as Advocacy Chair of the Massachusetts Music Educator's Association, served on the NAMM SupportMusic Coalition, and on the NAfME Advocacy Leadership Force. He is a Google Level 2 Certified Educator and a frequent clinician on education technology and music advocacy.
Before his career at Hal Leonard, John served as Director of Education for PreSonus Audio, where he developed curriculum, products, and marketing strategies for music education technology.
