NAMM’s Mlynczak: The Pro Audio Hall is Packed!

This interview was conducted before the Los Angeles wildfires. Mlynczak discusses the wildfires’ impact and NAMM’s relief effort response here.

Anaheim, CA (January 14, 2025)—The entire Pro Audio industry is looking forward to The NAMM Show later this month, but NAMM President and CEO John Mlynczak can’t wait for you to leave. “We want people to leave The NAMM Show thinking, ‘Yes, my career and my business are better because I was there,’” he says. “That’s why people come to NAMM every January—and we think about that every day.”

This year’s edition, taking place January 21-25 in Anaheim, Calif., promises to be one of the most exciting—and fulfilling— NAMM Shows in recent memory, seeing the annual gathering of the Pro Audio and Musical Instrument industries step into a new format based around three days of exhibits and five days of events.

Additionally, many exhibitors—including major tent-pole manufacturers like Roland, Fender (parent company to PreSonus) and Music Tribe (parent company to Midas and Behringer, among others)—are returning to the show for the first time since the pandemic.

“If you look at the show floor map, ACC North—the Pro Audio Hall—is packed,” says Mlynczak. “All our education sessions have been moved back over to the Hilton and the Marriott, because every room in the convention center is going to be a brand experience, especially on the pro audio side. Loudspeakers, they’re powder coated, they have a black mesh front, they’re so pretty—but what you really want is to hear them and experience the technology behind them. We have brand experiences throughout the convention center, and that’s going to be really exciting.”

NAMM Previews NAMM Show 2025 Music Performances

The new arrangement of event and exhibition days was designed to provide more of what the industry craves most in a post-pandemic world: in-person experiences that provide education, networking and more. Tuesday, January 21, will be the NAMM organization’s Day of Service (as it been for years), but the day will also be used for brand education seminars, workshops and the like. Wednesday, January 22, serves up Global Media Day along with more educational offerings, and then the exhibits open, running Thursday through Saturday.

Since exhibitors typically need every employee attending the show to man their booths, offering some of the educational programming before the exhibit days should let people attend a few sessions.

At the same time, it will also allow many companies to hold private events, dealer meetings and more prior to the show, helping exhibitors to make the most of their time in Anaheim. The change comes in the wake of exhibitor feedback following last year’s convention— the first NAMM Show to be held in the traditional January timeslot since 2020. “In 2024, we realized the industry desperately needs to gather,” says Mlynczak. “A lot of the brands that didn’t exhibit in 2024 still attended The NAMM Show, so I personally met with them, walked the floor with them, and said, ‘What does a gathering mean to you?’

“That taught us what we need to do for 2025, and it evolved into what you’re going to see this year: a five-day model; all the brands back, using their spaces to create brand experiences; massive, massive focus on influencers and media and real-time brand exposure throughout the show; and a real emphasis on the true-to- trade core relationships that make our industry strong—the retailers, suppliers, influencers and more.”

NAMM is definitely interested in influencers, but the organization has a broader definition of the term than most. While it is welcoming content creators, YouTubers and social media mavens with open arms—not to mention a new creator lounge that provides space and gear to create with—NAMM also sees, for example, touring front-of-house engineers as influencers.

“We do not think of NAMM as a community of 75,000 people; we think of it as 75 1,000-person communities,” says Mlynczak. “We’re trying to be very focused on each individual audience and really understand their value. In live touring, that front-of-house engineer is the purchase influencer. That engineer is going to be the one who says, ‘I want this SSL, I want this DiGiCo,’ and it might be a rental house that makes the purchase and a touring company that rents it, but that’s an ecosystem, so we have to understand it and the role the engineer plays in it.”

In the past, that level of audio professional, whether in live sound or recording, fell into a gray area that undervalued what those pros brought to the show. Mlynczak explains, “Typically, if you’re invited as a guest of a retailer, you’re walking around with your business card out and a hand over your badge, saying, ‘No, I’m not with this company; that’s just my badge. Here’s who I really am.’ It happens all the time.

I want to eliminate that—because you should be at the NAMM Show as who you are! That’s important to us, because your identity and value in the industry is that you’re someone who knows that console, software, all those products—and how they work together. You’re adding value to all the brands and retailers who sell those brands. You’re a key point of the industry, so we recognize you should be at The NAMM Show as that key connector, the glue between it all. That’s why we created individual memberships for NAMM and you can join as an engineer right now.”

With that in mind, NAMM has worked hard to create compelling reasons for audio pros of all stripes, whether studio or live, emerging or veteran, to attend. For many, the biggest draw will be getting to see the latest pro audio gear on the planet all in one place. L-Acoustics, d&b audiotechnik, Hosa, Adam Hall Group North America, EAW, Meyer Sound, Sound Devices, Blackmagic Design, Shure, Adamson Systems Engineering, Genelec, Avid, Trinnov, QSC, Sennheiser, Alcons Audio, RCF, Electro-Voice, Neutrik, DPA Microphones, Waves, Sony, Mackie, PMC, Allen & Heath, FBT and Schoeps Microphones are just a handful of the manufacturers who will be exhibiting in ACC North.

Then there’s also endless networking events; extensive educational offerings like two levels of Dante certification, ESTA’s Entertainment Tech Summit, and numerous Event Safety Alliance sessions, all offered on Wednesday, January 22; cool award shows like the NAMM TEC Awards and She Rocks Awards; and the opportunity to dive into the Pro Audio Pool Party at the Marriott.

Part of the reason there’s room for all these offerings is because of the shift away from four days of exhibits. By necessity, threeday NAMM Shows were held in 2022 and 2023 as the industry came back from Covid; afterward, roughly 80 percent of exhibitors requested that three days become the new standard—and NAMM listened.

“We needed more education, more networking and more time and space for all of the reasons that people are coming back to the show, which are, yes, exhibits and products, but also that in-person connection we thrive on,” says Mlynczak.

“The experience of NAMM has always happened Tuesday through Saturday, so this is just formalizing something that’s always been, recognizing that the fourth day—Sunday—was a slow and expensive half day for exhibitors. So now the goal is ‘Arrive Tuesday and have a jam-packed time all the way through leaving on Sunday morning.’”

And that’s going to happen—our schedule’s already slammed; how about yours?