Since debuting at a Baltimore YMCA Hall in 1902, the NAMM Show has undergone multiple transformations on its way to becoming the world’s largest annual trade event for the creators, manufacturers, retailers and distributors of musical instruments, equipment, technology, sound, lighting and recording gear. More transformations are in store this week.

Returning to Anaheim from Tuesday through Saturday — one day longer than last year’s edition — the 2025 NAMM Show will welcome attendees from NAMM’s 10,000 member companies. NAMM is short for National Association of Music Merchants.

They hail from the more than 120 countries that make up the $19 billion global music products industry, of which the U.S. accounts for more than $8 billion.

“Our goals change from year to year but are always mission-driven to strengthen the music industry,” said John Mlynczak, who in late 2023 became Carlsbad-based NAMM’s first new CEO and president in 21 years.“The biggest takeaway for me (from last year’s show) is that being present with our members, at all times, is absolutely essential,” he continued. “We will use the NAMM Show the same way our members do, to make important connections and set business goals for the coming years.”

More than 1,650 exhibitors representing over 3,500 brands will showcase their products and roll out new lines at this year’s show. The event is set to pivot in several key ways, including its conclusion on Saturday, rather than on a Sunday, when many international attendees typically depart early for their home countries.

Also for the first time, the show will devote its opening two days entirely to intensive educational programs, rather than spread them out through the event’s run. Offerings will include the Entertainment Tech Summit: Powering the Stages, the inaugural TEC Technology Tracks Summit, the NAMM Marketing Summit, and Profitability & Influencer Marketing.

By design, the show will provide a bigger platform than ever for social media influencers. They have become a growing force at the show, and — through their online equipment demonstrations and endorsements — in much of the industry NAMM represents.

Mia Asano, a 25-year-old violinist and influencer, will perform this week as the opening act for Mlynczak’s keynote address.

“I had dreamed of attending the NAMM Show my whole life, but last year was the first time I attended and I met so many people I previously only knew online,” said Asano, a 2022 Berklee College of Music graduate.

“I was invited as a content creator and was able to interview some of the artists and music brand representatives for YouTube videos I posted from the show. I’ll be doing the same thing this year. And I’ll be performing, twice, which is really cool.”

“We’re excited to have Mia,” Mlynczak said. “We know social media and influencers have an increasing impact, not just with a younger generation of music-instrument and gear consumers but with all generations.”

Constant pivots

Reaching as many people as possible is paramount for NAMM.

In addition to working to support its members, the year-round organization lobbies Congress on behalf of music and arts education and champions the rights of music creators to be fairly compensated — especially at a time when AI is increasing its reach. In June, NAMM will host the second annual Summer NeXT, a members-only “immersive education, networking and thought leadership” conference.

But the organization’s biggest and most prestigious platform for its members is the NAMM Show — an international gathering that creates ripple effects across the industry for much of the year. Since 2020, though, those ripples have seemed more like swelling and crashing waves in the wake of the pandemic.

The January 2020 NAMM Show — the last before the pandemic shutdown — drew a record 115,000 attendees. That is an enormous number for an event open only to music professionals, event producers, audio and lighting engineers, educators, students, media members and, more recently, influencers, but not the general public.

Because of a pandemic surge, the 2021 NAMM Show was held entirely online. Last year’s four-day edition drew 62,000. That was up from just under 48,000 in 2023 and 47,000 in 2022, when the show was scaled back to three days and held with a socially distanced layout that utilized just 50% of the sprawling Anaheim Convention Center.

Registration for this year’s show is up 10% over 2024. It remains to be seen if — or how much — the recent fires that devastated much of Los Angeles County may impact attendance. As a result of the fires, the deadline for registering for this year’s NAMM Show was extended by a week to Jan. 10.

In a statement issued Jan. 9, nearly a week after his interview for this report took place, Mlynczak said the 2025 NAMM Show will be held as planned. He also pledged the support of the NAMM Foundation to support “the needs of our members and partners in L.A. through this unprecedented tragedy.”

In a subsequent statement Tuesday, Mlynczak said: “Yesterday, we visited the Anaheim Convention Center and confirmed firsthand with city officials that there is no impact on their services or air quality, and we can proceed with a safe and healthy show for all attendees.

“NAMM is first and foremost an association that cares deeply for our members and the global music products industry. This year, the NAMM Show will demonstrate our industry’s commitment by uniting as a community in support of those impacted in Los Angeles.”

On Wednesday, NAMM announced it will operate a music industry relief center Thursday through Saturday at the NAMM Show. It is partnering with MusiCares, Guitar Center, Gibson and Roland to collect donations for relief funds for Los Angeles-area fire victims.

A ‘rare and special moment’

For NAMM members on both sides of the Atlantic, the show is the most important annual event they attend.

“It is the gathering place for our industry. Nothing else compares,” said Tom Sumner, the president of Yamaha Corp. of America, long one of NAMM’s biggest exhibitors.

“It’s the No. 1 industry event of the year,” agreed Simon Cross, the London-based chief production officer of Native Instruments. “Everybody you want to speak to is in one place at the same time, and that is a very rare and special moment for the industry. The NAMM Show is a long, exhausting week, but it’s extremely energizing and rewarding.”

Mlynczak credits NAMM’s year-round staff for how well the show is executed, along with temporary staffers who are brought on to help with the event, His work heading the organization has earned praise from NAMM members.

“John is doing a great job and he’s making changes that I think are really good. He’s changed NAMM’s focus to make it more member-focused,” said Yamaha’s Sumner.

“He’s a great leader who came in at a pivotal time for NAMM and the industry,” agreed The Music Trades publisher Paul Majeski, whose company has tracked the global music products industry since 1891.

The 1.8-million-square-foot Anaheim Convention Center has hosted the annual January event since 1976. Having switched to an entirely virtual format in 2021, and then slowly but steadily rebuilding as a live event over the past three

years, the NAMM Show’s organizers are now working to bolster the event’s post-pandemic momentum. And they are adapting as deftly as possible to a constantly evolving marketplace in an increasingly high-tech era.

“It’s all about working together, as an industry, to create customers,” Mlynczak said. “That’s what we’re hearing from our member companies.”

A significant number of those companies — including such international powerhouses as Gibson, Fender, Marshall, Roland and Taylor Guitars — are returning to the NAMM Show in a big way this week after having bowed out of the event’s smaller, post-2020 editions. Their return is a victory for NAMM that also underscores the event’s importance to music-related companies, large and small alike.

“Having us all back shows real promise toward the future of our global music industry community,” said Steph Carter, Marshall’s London-based culture marketing director.

“The NAMM Show is a key moment for us each year. It’s where brands get to showcase their latest instruments, technology, content and innovations. You get to see musicians and companies that promote and celebrate music, and you interact and trade ideas. The NAMM Show has it all.”

The reappearance at this year’s edition of Marshall, Gibson, et al., is also being applauded by competing companies.

“We see the return of the big players to the NAMM Show as very significant,” said Ola Strandberg, the founder and chief creative officer of Sweden’s Strandberg Guitars.

“It is a show of strength for the NAMM organization, after seeing the importance of most other global trade shows diminish over the past several years. The NAMM Show has been instrumental in growing our business and reaching mainstream success. Despite being a trade-only show, the ripple effects to consumers are huge.”

Those sentiments are shared by Taylor Guitars’ Master Guitar Builder and Ownership Partner Andy Powers. His San Diego County company is returning to the NAMM Show for the first time since 2020. Taylor, like other companies that will showcase their products this week, has a number of new instruments it will unveil.

“I think these returns of companies reflect the notion that making music is an inherently real and real-time experience,” Powers said.

“The NAMM Show is a dynamic, in-person, relationship-based experience. In seeking to serve our music community, it feels like this is a preferred form of engagement for musicians and music dealers to share their common love for music and instruments.”

Also back in the fold is Behringer, a 36-year-old German music and audio products company that is at the NAMM Show for the first time in nearly a decade.

“NAMM didn’t have to do any arm-twisting to get these companies back,” noted The Music Trades publisher Majeski. “It’s the value of the NAMM Show that brought them back.”

Qualcomm’s NAMM Show debut

One of the most notable newcomers to the event this year is Qualcomm Technologies. This month, it is introducing the Snapdragon X Platform. The latest iteration of its Snapdragon X Series personal computer portfolio, it can be used by musicians for both performing and recording.

The product is one Qualcomm believes will be especially attractive to music creators because of its $600 price range, high speed, low battery requirements, light weight and innovative use of NPU — a specialized processor designed for executing machine-learning algorithms — which enables real-time separation of vocals and instruments for any audio program used in Windows.

“NAMM understands this is an amazing time in the music industry, with technology and AI, and being at the NAMM Show is a great fit for us,” said PJ Jacobowitz, Qualcomm’s staff manager for global product marketing.

The combination of new and veteran NAMM Show participants is welcomed by Mlynczak, who is an avid social media user and an accomplished chamber music trumpeter.

“Everyone is back at the show!” he said. “We’re calling this the year of unity and stability.“

That is no mere public relations catchphrase.

The marketplace that NAMM’s members serve does finally seem to be returning to some sense of normalcy. It is doing so after undergoing several years of pandemic-fueled tumult, during which home instrument sales soared as concert tours, church worship performances and school band programs shuddered to a halt, only to come back stronger than ever at the same time home instrument sales began to drop.

There have been enough dips and peaks to evoke an extended roller coaster ride, including the pandemic-driven demise of the Frankfurt Musikmesse, Europe’s largest NAMM-like trade show, which never returned after its 2020 gathering was canceled due to the pandemic.

While stadium concert treks by Taylor Swift and Coldplay set records in 2024, the year also saw multiple tours and festivals canceled because of soaring expenses and low ticket sales. For good — or, rather, bad — measure, the musical instrument market in China plunged last year.

The pandemic led to record profits, backlogged orders and supply chain issues for some segments of the industry. It also saw last April’s announcement that the 100-year-old Sam Ash chain — once among the industry’s biggest U.S. music retailers — was closing its final 42 stores.

Guitar Center, which has 300 locations, declared bankruptcy in 2020. Following a financial reorganization, it has struggled to adjust to a quickly changing marketplace. A major move to online shopping by music consumers has become a growing challenge to brick-and-mortar stores. Ditto the fact that such companies as Reverb.com, which was founded in 2013, are now attracting a significant number of customers for new, used and vintage instruments and equipment.

While Taylor Guitars and some other companies described 2024 as a challenging year, they are expressing optimism for 2025.

“It depends on the market, but in general we’re seeing growth ahead,” said Yamaha’s Sumner. “I call it ‘returning to norm’ — the normal growth patterns we saw prepandemic.”

Total 2024 revenue figures for the industry will not be available until later this year. According to The Music Trades, the global total for 2023 was $18.8 billion, down from 2022’s pandemic-driven $19.5 billion. The U.S. total for 2023 was $8.2 billion, a decrease from 2022’s $8.3 billion.

Despite these declines, 2023 stacks up as the third most profitable year on record for the music industry, and The Music Trades publisher Majeski predicts 2025 global sales will increase to nearly $20 billion. That figure does not include sales by Reverb.com, eBay and similar online marketplaces.

“The industry has been recovering the past three years from the pandemic and supply-chain chaos, but that is going away,” Majeski said. “We’ve got the presidential election behind us, and I think people will focus on spending again and buying music gear. At end of day, there is no shortage of music-makers out there.”