NAMM 2026: With this year’s hotly anticipated NAMM Show looming on the horizon, we felt it was high time we spoke with the recently installed President and CEO, John Mlynczak.
With vast expertise across the music education domain, as well as a stint driving learning at PreSonus Audio, Mlynczak’s appointment in early 2023 marked a real statement of intent. At that time, the future of NAMM was looking somewhat bleaker following the industry’s painful readjustments post-COVID.
With John at the helm, NAMM’s year-round educational offerings - and people-first attitude - have been key factors in its annual winter show regaining both its attendance and its importance to the wider industry. As John explains, this year’s show is already well on course to exceed previous records across a range of metrics.
We caught up with John to learn about his experience of leading NAMM so far, and his view on some of the key industry concerns that will undoubtedly be on everybody’s lips at the Anaheim Convention Center this year…
MusicRadar: Hi John, can you take our readers through your career prior to becoming NAMM’s CEO. How did that journey lead to this position?
John Mlynczak: “I just was fascinated by musical instruments my whole life. I was going to music class in elementary school, and my dad was playing in bands. I'd play guitar at home and play the piano at home - I would just play anything I could put my hands on! This love of instruments carried on all through school.
“When it came down to college, I did music,. When it then came on to grad school, I wanted to go and do a masters in music.
“So, I think my career is really three stories. The first story is just like blindly loving music. [As] a kid, I got good grades [in music], went to college, all that. Then I’m gigging all over Louisiana, New Orleans, and I'm like, ‘Okay, wait a minute, this is great, but what's next?’
“I went back and got a second masters in education. There was something in my brain percolating when it came to music education and technology, because this was the time when the iPad came out in 2010 and everyone had GarageBand at their fingertips.
“Suddenly, every kid had a music creation tool. You had online platforms like Noteflight too, enabling people to go on and write music online. So suddenly [I felt] we should be teaching this stuff.
“So I started teaching it at my school, but it wasn’t an approved course on any state level. So I went to the state, got it approved. I wrote curriculum and started doing presentations. Eventually, I got a job at PreSonus, as they were looking to get into music education space.
“[At PreSonus] we kind of made up this job. We didn't know what to call it. I think we called it Music Education Market Manager, which eventually was like Director of Education. The thinking with that role was, that if we taught people how to educate students in audio creation and music production, then we can grow a market. And, if we do it with our products, they'll use our products.
“That was my first time in the industry. So that's like ‘story two’ of my life. I left teaching, joined this industry.
“So, I joined in January. They said, ‘Go to LA, you're going to the NAMM show’. I said, ‘What's a NAMM Show?’
“I attended my first NAMM Show in 2013. It was an interesting moment there, because for me, it was [the culmination] of everything I had done all my life to date. I’d been a working musician for years and never knew NAMM existed! I was actually mad when I saw the scope of what the NAMM Show was.
"I’d never thought about where instruments come from; I just thought a mummy trumpet and a daddy trumpet fell in love! But no, someone makes these things.
“I then got a job at Hal Leonard through different relationships. I was hired to run Noteflight, which is one of the technologies I started using as a teacher. I ended up moving to Boston because Hal Leonard had bought that company.
“I then got involved with NAMM’s advocacy and the NAMM foundation. I was working a lot with dealers across Hal Leonard's network. I was traveling to every conference, doing all these sessions. So I just got to know a lot of people. I developed a deep love of the industry, I was lucky to be able to run companies. I was able to get leadership positions and had really great mentors, it was just a great ride."
MR: When did the NAMM leadership position come up?
JM: “People kept asking me, and, at that point, I was 39 years old. I [thought], ‘I can't do this job’ . But more people kept asking me. I said, ‘Well, put in my name.’
“At that point, NAMM was going through a big transition. Everyone was talking about the death of trade shows, and asking if NAMM was still relevant in the world of influencers. The NAMM CEO position is the only job I've ever interviewed for - every other job in the industry was a position that a company created for me, [usually] because we had a new idea. We were going to do something that wasn't done before.
“So, I didn’t know how to make a resume and I have to apply for a real job. In the interview process, it turned out that a lot of the conversations were around how we adjust to where things going to be in ten years. How does NAMM use modern technology?, and how does NAMM as a show - and as an organization - serve more people? How do we create a platform for year-round engagement? It’s not just about [the shows] anymore, it's about being an association platform.
“I actually had done those things before. So it turned out I got the gig. It's been almost three years now, and it's been great. We've been able to transform a lot of our technology at the show. We've been able to get a new audiences at the show, expand out our education offerings.
"We're announcing new NAMM NeXT [online sessions] for 2026 at the show. Just the things we're doing now mean we're reaching more people. It turned out that every conversation and everything I’d done in the industry for ten years was actually a job interview!
“After [the initial interview rounds], I got to the full committee and, man, they had talked, they had talked to so many people about me. I just remember leaving that call. [I was glad] I hadn’t done anything real stupid over the past ten years or said anything mean!”
MR: Was it a point of priority for you to infuse that educational ethos that had guided your career into NAMM and its surrounding culture?
JM: “NAMM already has a long history of education, it was doing education sessions back in the 1950s and ‘60s, so it’s part of the history of NAMM, but yeah, for me education is something I’m passionate about. We’re an industry where employees need to grow. So, it’s like our mission [at NAMM] is to strengthen the music products industry. Then we strengthen the people in the industry to be better.
“At my first speech at my first NAMM show, I said ‘we’re not the 'music products' industry, we’re the 'music people' industry’. That’s what we need to remember. We’re in the people industry. That’d definitely a theme that NAMM is driving a lot.
“We want to know, who are the people at the show? Who do they interact with, Who are we educating? Who are the people at these companies - we provide many tools to help link them in with what we offer.
“I talked to the board about it, because our association was always built on like member companies - and in [the old days] companies were defined as building, when you had a retail store etc. But now it’s different. I was like ‘Guys, we’ve got to to serve brains not bricks. We’re not serving brick and mortar we’re serving people.”
MR: What is your attitude to the growth in AI - particularly generative AI in the music production domain? I know there’s a lot of discussion around the topic at the upcoming show
JM: "Yeah, it's the thing of the day. I mean, look, when the internet came out, there were a couple of people that were like ‘Ah, no one's gonna put anything on that box. It's not going anywhere’ and there’s people today [who think] AI is just another example of ‘it’s not going anywhere’.
“Where are we in the AI cycle of new innovation - I think we're definitely in the messy experiment, let's try a bunch of stuff and overuse it-phase.
“AI [right now] is like a chef with a new spice - and all of a sudden it's like, ‘no, everything tastes like cumin! Stop!'
“But I do think that it's not going anywhere. When I look at our industry's evolution, I think the quicker we embrace it, the quicker we get through this ‘messy’ phase. It’s going to disrupt some of the ways we used to do stuff, but it's going to create opportunities that we can't even imagine right now.”
“So we embrace AI. You see it in education, you see it in the companies. It's not our place as the association to decide, you know, what's good and bad. It's definitely our place to propel an industry forward."
MR: Obviously after COVID there was a significant scale-back of the size of the show, would you say that NAMM has now regained its full strength?
JM: “Oh, yeah, we're definitely back in a position of strength. Obviously there was no show in 2021, and then, you know, quite frankly, putting a show in June of 2022 and April of 2023 didn't help either.
"Hindsight is absolutely 20/20 moving the NAMM Show around, but the timing just didn't work. So we basically had three years of complete, utter disruption. So we get back to January in 2024, but also, you know, you still had some big companies not there. So we invited them. And we had, we had really big conversations.
“They were all there because they met with me personally. I begged them. We said, ‘what does this look like for you in the future?’ Like, ‘what is the NAMM Show in a world where everyone has a podcast, everyone can launch product, everyone can talk about product all year round. What's the value of the show now? And we really feel confident we're there.
“We're 25% up in registration (as of today) than we were last year. So I don’t know what the final [attendance] figure will be - 70, 75 or 80,000 maybe, we’ll see where the lands. We did make a conscious effort though. We knew that we had to build back.
“The five-day model, with three days of exhibits is one we tried last year that worked really well. So, we expanded upon that. There’s been internal arguments about whether we go full trade or full consumer. What we realised is like both sides of that debate actually want both, but they don’t think they do.
“We had to ask what is a consumer? [Brands] want to reach consumers but don’t want them to waste time in the booth. That’s where the influencer thing comes in. The cool thing about being back now is that we can ask [brands] who they want to talk to - they want industry, they want artists, they want educators and they want influencers. It’s the influencers that have massive reach. So we started bringing in and cultivating these influencer audiences, as we started working with companies on brand experience.
“So, I say we're in a good place because all the companies are saying they're getting what they need out of the NAMM Show. They're seeing who they want to see at the show, but they're reaching millions and millions. Last year we had 40 million views on content created the NAMM Show. It was 24 million the year before that, and it was 9 million the year before that. I've told the team they have to break 50 this year!"
MR: What are some of the new elements that will make NAMM 2026 the strongest show yet?
JM: “Beyond the various awards shows, as far as being around the show, the cool thing is our new app. You can use it to go sector-by-sector. You can say, ‘show me all live events’, or, ‘show me all music education’, ‘show me all retail;. The cool thing is, when you do that and you select, you're going to see a curated program.
“NAMM is not one show, it’s not one audience. We're actually probably 70 audiences that have to find each other.
“We're running 70 events under one umbrella, and our job is to make sure that everyone finds the person they need to - because that's when they're successful.
“[The data we get from the app] can be used to inform our webinars almost every month, and our NAMM NeXT events in Europe. All that's under the hood, that's what we've been working on all year.
"So the new app, new registration, all this stuff, all of it is very strategic, because the more we learn about the people in our industry, the more we can serve them. That’s been my focus since I began. We have to get [more deeply] engaged with the people in our industry.”
“Our industry is built on relationships. It's built on people. It's built on people that trust each other, that have each other's back. And you saw it last year.
“Look, last year was rough on our industry. But our industry supported each other [during the tariff situation in US].
MR: I know you were very involved last year in that [tariff] situation. How has that wider economic and political context affected the show this year?
JM: “Yes, everyone's paying higher. Everyone's paying more to import anything - whether it's a raw material or a finished product and everything in-between. Everyone's paying more. And obviously that has to come out of somewhere.
“But it was a nice pressure test, because we had said a couple of years ago that we were going to get more involved. We're there for industry.
“When the tariff thing happened, we were in Washington, D.C., lobbying with all the guitar manufacturers. We were out there on every webinar and partnered with the Consumer Technology Association, making sure that our brands that make technology were part of that lobby effort.
"We partnered with the National Retail Federation, to make sure our small retail is [on board] We were also in Europe, actually working with European members to actually submit letters against retaliatory tariffs We were all over, everything we could do.
“And look, there wasn't much process, and the only people that got tariff reductions were people that gave watches or golden phones.
“Again, I'm just just repeating what was on the news. At the end of the day, if we. We left no stone unturned. There was nothing left on the field - we put it all out there. One of our metrics is like ‘increase the percentage of companies in our industry that we touch throughout the year’. We blew through all our metrics last year because people needed us. But [it has fostered] deeper relationships too."
MR: This year also marks 125 years of NAMM. That’a a time-span that has seen some quite significant changes to both the industry and the world at large…
JM: “Oh yeah, even in the decade. I mean, you go back to 2016 - a lot's happened. You know, the rise of YouTube, the rise of the influencer, the [prominence] of social media. It was still young in 2016. The election changed the game for how people used targeted ads.
"But when you zoom even further out to see the full 125 years, you start to think like, we’ve always got through it. We’re an industry of music products, and humanity will always want to make music. There were so many bands on tour during World War II. People make music at all times.
“If we were the National Association of Telephone Switchboard Operators or Ice Block Delivery Men, our industry might have disappeared, but we're not. So we're going to be fine.
“Second, we work together. When something happens, we as an industry don't get. competitive, we come together and we come together at the NAMM Show. It where we as an industry sit down and say, ‘what do we need?’ And that's why I think NAMM is the longest running national association in the world. So, we’re going to celebrate it.
"We’re going to bring a lot of hope and happiness to our industry. We’re excited."
For our latest NAMM 2026 coverage, make sure you bookmark our rolling NAMM live blog, which will cover all the new products, key events and significant moments of this year's show as they happen.
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