Create the Opportunities You Want (John Mlynczak CEO of NAMM)
Also available on: Apple Podcasts · Spotify
John Mlynczak, President and CEO of NAMM, shares his path from trumpet player and music educator to roles at PreSonus, Hal Leonard, and ultimately landing at NAMM. We discuss the importance of music education, how technology is changing the music products industry, and how the NAMM Show is evolving for brands, artists, creators, and the larger music community.
Key Takeaways
Don’t wait for the opportunity to find you. John’s career repeatedly grew because he talked to people, identified opportunities, and helped create roles that did not previously exist.
Every gig can lead to another gig. Showing up prepared, having a good attitude, and respecting the people around you can be as important to a creative career as talent.
Skills can become useful in ways you never expected. John studied education administration for one career path, then found himself using adult learning and leadership skills in entirely different roles.
Digital access makes human connection more valuable. When almost anyone can launch a product, brand, or piece of content, genuine experiences and relationships become stronger differentiators.
Don’t lock yourself into one definition of your career. Following the larger passion rather than a particular job title can uncover opportunities you could not have planned for.
Follow John Mlynczak:
Need more perspective on building a creative career that lasts?
Sign up for The Monthly Scramble for featured episodes, collaboration ideas, reviews, and more creative success stories from artists, storytellers, and creative entrepreneurs.
Related Episodes
Designing with Nature (RA Beattie from Breedlove Guitars)
Guest: RA Beattie
Filmed at The NAMM Show, RA Beattie from Breedlove Guitars discusses guitar design, sustainability, and how a music product company can balance innovation with the materials and resources behind its instruments.
Exploring AI and the Metaverse in Music (Aarash Darroodi from Fender)
Guest: Aarash Darroodi
Aarash Darroodi from Fender explores how emerging technology like AI and the metaverse could impact music, creativity, and the future of the industry.
Host: Michael Zimmerlich
Post-Production: EarthtoMoira
Music by: Daphne Greene
A podcast by Omelette Prevail, a creative company connecting creators, brands, and ideas through partnerships and collaboration.
Transcript:
00:00:00 Music as a Lifelong Path
Mike Zimmerlich: Hey, John, how’s it going?
John Mlynczak: Hey, Michael. It’s great. How are you doing?
Mike Zimmerlich: Doing good, thanks. Thank you so much for being on the show. I really do appreciate it. I’m very excited to have you because I can’t wait to get into what you currently are doing today. But I discovered right before the call that we are kindred spirits in many ways, including some of the instruments that we play.
But also, I have been a fan of the NAMM Show for a very long time. I’ve been going for over, I think, 10 years now. It’s one of my favorite events to go to every single year, and I do talk about it quite a bit on this podcast. But I did want to mention that starting off, how excited I am to have you on.
So thank you so much for being here.
John Mlynczak: Of course. Just two trumpet players talking. What else do we talk about? We’ll spare your audience mouthpiece size, throat size, what kind of brass you use on your bell, how much better than you that I am, things like that that they don’t want to hear.
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah, no, I can’t wait to get to that stuff. Oh, man.
But speaking of trumpet players, I do want to start off with asking you a very broad question to kind of get things going here, which is, what does music actually mean to you?
John Mlynczak: You know, when I was teaching music, I had this opening line to parents that first night where they all come to back-to-school night, and you’re supposed to tell them about these types of reeds and make sure you have the uniform right and after-school, all that. I stopped doing all that.
I finally just said, “You know, your children are creating sounds that make humans feel. They’re creating the sounds that make us feel every day.”
I think about music a lot like that because everywhere in society, when we want to feel happy, sad, anywhere, music is there. It’s just such a part of who we are as humans.
What makes us human is that we can feel. What makes us human intelligence and not artificial intelligence is that we feel, and we make decisions based on discernment and about care for others. Music has been part of that since humanity has existed. I think humanity, in its core, music is the fabric of that because it’s what makes us feel, and I think that’s why it’s really, really special.
Mike Zimmerlich: Great. I love that, and that’s a great way to introduce parents and to let them know why music is so important and why it still remains important to this day for that reason.
It is one of the major art forms in our society.
John Mlynczak: Absolutely, and people flock to it. It’s what gathers us. Think about how many people gather around the world for musical events and how it makes us feel.
At the gym, in the car, everywhere. Music is just ubiquitous to humanity. It’s a very special thing, and I think it’s just one of those things that society will always have no matter what, which makes our industry so special, too.
Mike Zimmerlich: I can tell you’re really passionate about this. Has music always been a part of your life? Did you play music when you were a kid?
John Mlynczak: Yeah. As a kid, it was sort of all the things. Music was always there. I had my great-grandma’s piano sitting in the dining room, and so as a kid, you’re always tinkering on it and playing and learning to play that.
My dad played guitar and drums in a country band, so there was always an acoustic guitar laying around, usually propped up against the couch. There was always the piano.
Every kid wants to be a drummer. I can’t tell you how much Tupperware I broke by taking my mom’s Tupperware and beating on it with sticks from the backyard when I’m in second grade. Like, “Mom, buy me a drum set.”
For some reason, I just always gravitated to sound and music. It was part of going to church every Sunday and listening to music and having it in the household.
I don’t have a memory in childhood without it, and I think it’s just been something that’s been exciting to me since as long as I can remember.
Mike Zimmerlich: Did you know then that you wanted to become a music educator? Because that was the first step in your career, music education.
John Mlynczak: Yeah, it’s interesting. The first time I actually thought about what I wanted to be was about six years after I’d been teaching. Actually, when I left teaching was the first time I thought about it.
Looking back now, I just loved music so much as a kid.
Elementary school, you get to go to music class. Music class was everything. It was great. I was lucky to have great schools with great school music. Cannot emphasize enough the power of school music and arts in schools.
But I had that. Middle school, it was like, “Well, what elective do you want?”
I didn’t have a choice. The choice was chosen for me. It was like, music. I don’t want to do any of these other things on the little green sheet where you said, “What do you want to do?” Band class.
High school, band class. There was marching band and marching drum corps. I didn’t have a free summer.
What do these kids do at the pool all summer? I was in band camp. I was going to band camp.
It was always a thing, and then you get this choice where it’s like, “You want to go to college. What are you going to major in?” The counselor’s talking to you.
I didn’t have a choice. I don’t even know what the other options are. I was like, “I’m going to be a music major, duh.”
Then from there, it’s like, “Well, what are you going to do with your life?” Well, I’m going to play and teach music, obviously.
It just kind of went that fast. I woke up one day and I was teaching music and gigging, and all the things were happening. It wasn’t really until doing that for about six years where I finally was like, “Huh. I wonder if this is what I’m going to do the rest of my life. I don’t know.”
Mike Zimmerlich: Interesting. So it sounds like you knew already from the get-go that music was going to be a part of your life professionally in some way.
But I find it interesting because some people realize right away that they want to be an educator. In fact, for myself, before I got into entrepreneurship, I thought my path as well was going to be in music education, and then it led into entrepreneurship instead.
Ironically, later on in life, I became an adjunct professor teaching music business. So I still ended up getting into education in some form or fashion later on.
But I really find it fascinating that it just was your world, and that’s what you knew, and then you went into it. It wasn’t until later that you took a step back a little bit and said, “What do I want to do in addition to this?” or, “What’s my next step in life?”
John Mlynczak: Yeah, and I’m going to say in addition, because that’s really important. There was nothing wrong with teaching and playing. It was great. It was like, “Oh, I’ve made it. Now what?”
Music, I had the choice. You can do performance or music ed.
Of course, you could still do all the same performance and get the music ed degree, the old fallback, but it was never a fallback to me.
As musicians, we’re always teaching. There’s no musician in the world that’s not a teacher. Being on stage and playing, someone’s watching and picking up how you’re doing it.
You are teaching. You’re always explaining that. It’s that craftsperson, master-apprentice type of thing. That’s how we learn. That’s how we pass on the tradition.
Look, I worked for Hal Leonard. I know all about the method books and the online resources and the videos and everything we can do. You still need a person to pass down that craft and that art for generations to come.
I’ve always been all the things. I want to teach it. I want to play it. I want to record it.
I had my own recording gear. I had my little SKB case of microphones and my FireStudio and my MacBook, setting up rigs and doing recordings for ensembles and editing in Cubase at the time.
Then I was going to play gigs on trumpet, teaching private lessons, writing charts for brass quintets or rock bands, and then teaching.
You just do all the things because you love it, and you never really think about it.
I was lucky enough to always teach lessons. In college, you’re teaching lessons. All your friends are working minimum-wage jobs for five bucks. I’m making like 30 bucks an hour teaching lessons.
I was college rich. I mean, I was loaded, right?
Going to the bank and having a stack of $30 checks and trying to feed them in the little machine, back in the day.
For the young folks listening, we’ll explain what a bank is.
Mike Zimmerlich: Exactly. There was no Venmo back then.
John Mlynczak: Well, that would have been great, man. Filling out that form with like 17 little checks. It was such a pain.
But I was always lucky to have income from it and always just have gigs.
I think one thing, just naturally, when you love it and you really want to strive at it, you get a lot of gigs because you just...
I learned later in life, it’s like, “Well, why am I working so much? Oh, because I love it. I come in with a good attitude. I know my part because I don’t want to mess it up, and I respect the people around me.”
It wasn’t until I met people that didn’t do that that I’m like, “Huh, maybe that’s something we should think about.”
Again, it comes from a natural love of it.
I just feel like as a kid, and I consider myself a kid all the way through college, I was just wired to want to do all the things.
Even jumping ahead to today, with NAMM, we do a lot of things. I’m used to spinning plates, and that’s what is fun to me. We’re spinning a lot of plates all for the same mission.
00:10:00 The Gigging Moment That Changed Everything
Mike Zimmerlich: So I do want to talk more about that. I want to go back to when you made the decision that, okay, I want to do something else.
Again, you mentioned yourself that you are fulfilled in doing everything music-related, and you love teaching and so forth, and then you were thinking about what the next step was.
Do you remember coming to that realization of what was the next step of your career?
John Mlynczak: Can I tell you the funny story?
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah, please.
John Mlynczak: I’m going to let it all out there because this is a podcast for artists and creatives. I’ll tell you the moment. I remember it, and I will paint a picture for you.
I was lucky enough to be a trumpet player in New Orleans, where you could throw a rock and hit eight gigs, but you could also hit 12 other trumpet players. So you had to be out there.
I was lucky to play with the symphony as one of their top calls, play all the big wedding gigs, all that. I was Mr. Steal Your Gig, right? I was out there doing it all.
I loved it. Obviously, I’m a trumpet player, so I was the best ever.
I’d had all the big high-profile gigs, and I’d done them for years and years.
It was probably my fifth or sixth year, and then you get into a groove. When people need something for a graduation, for a wedding ceremony, they’re like, “Who’s the last guy that played? Call the last guy. He was good.”
Every gig is an audition for the next gig.
I’d gotten into a steady routine.
I was playing a gig with the principal trombone of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, a great, great professional orchestra, and we had a bunch of gigs on the same day.
We were doing a wedding gig for a quintet at one of the big plantations, and then we had to run for the symphony.
Here’s the moment. Union symphony, you have to get out of the car with tails on. Tails, tie, you had to exit the car representing the orchestra by the rules. So no rolling in, changing clothes in the back of the hall. They had the union rep out there.
We finished our quintet gig, where we were wearing all black, and I’m like, “Dude, where do we change? We can’t roll in. We can’t change at this wedding.”
He’s like, “No, I got it, man. I’ve done this.” The guy’s like 60 years old.
He’s like, “No, I got this, bro. Meet me at the McDonald’s over on Carondelet.”
I was like, “Okay.”
So we go to this McDonald’s in New Orleans. It was everything you expect.
He’s like, “No, they got a great big bathroom. It’s easy to change in.”
Okay.
This guy had gigged so long in this area that he knows all the changing places between gigs, and I was a few years in.
So here I am standing in a McDonald’s bathroom with the principal trombone of this orchestra in our skivvies, putting on tuxes on a floor so greasy that I was like the guy in Home Alone with the greasy floor trying to stand up, and walking out of the bathroom in tails.
I was like, “Is this my life? Is this what it is? Maybe there’s something else.”
This guy’s got 35 years on me. I don’t know if I really want to be doing this in 35 years for a living.
That was the moment. True story. I wouldn’t make that up. There’s too many funny details in that.
That was the moment that I’m like, “What else could I add to this life?”
I loved gigging, but I’m like, “I’m playing the same gig for the same bread, getting undressed in the same bathroom. There’s got to be another path.”
I just loved education. So it was at that moment I went and said, “I need to go back to school,” because that’s what we do.
I only have music degrees, so I can only do music.
So I went back and did a second master’s in education administration, got certified as a school principal, arts administrator, because I wanted to do arts administration.
That was going to allow me to take my teaching to a district or state level, superintendent of arts or something like that.
Little did I know that I was learning adult learning theory and professional development and all these things that would make you a great business leader and a better educator, which are skills I use every day, just not in the exact job I thought I was preparing myself for.
Mike Zimmerlich: That’s incredible.
So from the timeline, you went from essentially gigging, and that’s when you went into doing formal education. Was that the time that you were teaching general music, or were you teaching something else at that point?
John Mlynczak: Yeah, I was teaching grades three through eight, and I was doing high school marching band after school, just kind of doing the whole thing, and I was gigging.
Because the one thing they don’t tell you when you’re studying trumpet, Michael, when we’re learning how to be trumpet players, is nobody needs trumpet at 9:30 AM on a Tuesday.
You’re like, “Wait a minute. What do I do Monday and Tuesday? I’m needed on Friday night. I’m needed on Saturday night, but man, I’m pretty bored on Tuesday morning.”
So I was teaching full time and gigging full time, and actually earning the same salary doing both.
It was great. They say two halves make a whole. Teaching, you make a teacher’s salary. Gigging, you make the same thing. So two halves made a whole, and life was good.
But that was the moment where I’m like, “Well, what am I going to do gigging? I’m going to do the education thing.”
Funny enough, I got the degree. I was going to be a school principal.
00:16:00 Creating Opportunities in the Music Industry
John Mlynczak: I ended up falling into this administration teacher evaluation thing in Louisiana when Louisiana won Race to the Top.
This was after the 2008 recession. There was a bunch of money being pumped into schools, the bailout money. Part of the bailout money was education reform.
So I got a contract to lead this creative arts assessment project for the state. That was really fun.
Then I was ready for a gig, and I thought I was going to go, “Okay, I’m going into the State Department of Education.”
I worked there, and there was so much red tape that it was like, “I’d rather change in the bathroom than work in this red tape.”
So then I was like, “What am I doing?”
That kind of moment of, “Am I lost?”
Then something smacks me in the face, which was I saw, literally, I’m watching the news, and I saw the groundbreaking for the new PreSonus office in Baton Rouge. Big expansion.
I gigged with enough people that worked there, and I just kind of shot my shot and reached out to some leadership and said, “Hey, I teach music technology around the corner from you. I see you’re expanding. Is there any thought about music technology, education, anything in that world?”
They’re like, “Can you come in tomorrow?”
I was like, “Oh.”
So I came in and started talking.
They were really interested. “You teach students audio? You teach them to be studio producers?”
I’m like, “Well, kind of, but I also teach them to create music through the national standards. Composition is really transforming from pen and paper to digital tools, and every kid has GarageBand and notation, and Studio One is so perfect for that. I could use Studio One in my teaching,” and blah, blah, blah.
Turns out they were literally internally having conversations about, “How do we grow into the market?”
They had a whole market expansion plan. I didn’t know what a market was at the time.
It was like two people in the right place at the right time.
We agreed that I would come in every Wednesday at 4:00 and meet with their VP of sales and talk about what it is I would do for an education market.
What does PreSonus in education look like? PreSonus EDU is what they called it.
None of us knew, but we knew that we liked each other.
I came in every Wednesday at 4:00 and sat there, and we just kept this evolving conversation until we talked ourselves into a job.
They’re like, “Can you write a proposal?”
Being an academic and just getting out of grad school, I wrote a six-page document.
Now, anyone in the business world in the music industry knows that a six-word document is too long.
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah, it’s true.
John Mlynczak: It’s like, “Sell it now.”
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah, basically.
John Mlynczak: I remember writing this six-page document, and they’re looking at me like, “You expect me to read this? Come on, just give it to me straight. It’s end of the month. We’ve got to go, bro.”
It was funny because I was having these conversations where education and industry collided for the first time.
I remember this VP, close friend of mine today, Rick Naqvi. I’ll call him out because I love the guy.
He was like, “Hey, man.”
I’m thinking channel sales, market expansion, figuring out product bundles. I’m like, “What’s a channel? What’s a market? What’s a product bundle?”
Then he’s looking at my document because one of my proposals was about, if I could teach teachers and create curriculum around teaching music creation with PreSonus tools, that would drive the sale.
I was trying to get myself a teaching job.
But I was like, “Look, if we teach every teacher how to teach music technology using your tools, do you know how many schools would buy them? It’s insane.”
So I had this whole thing about curriculum, and he looked at me and he’s like, “What’s a rubric?”
I’m like, “That’s a rubric.”
We just had this disconnect. He knew nothing about my world, and I knew nothing about his world.
But I got hired, and my first day on the job I showed up and they said, “What are you going to do?”
I said, “What do you want me to do?”
They said, “What are you going to do?”
I said, “What do you want me to do?”
And we figured it out.
So a job with no job description.
Mike Zimmerlich: You essentially willed your way into a job at PreSonus.
John Mlynczak: Yeah.
My teaching job, I was talking to them, it was a part-time job, and they actually made the full-time job for me in music technology and all that.
The first job I ever applied for in my life was the NAMM job.
Even the Hal Leonard job, I created that one, too.
The only existing job I’ve ever applied for is NAMM CEO.
But it goes back to being that tinkerer and that passion person.
You don’t apply to gigs. You go out there, you talk to people, you make it happen.
You conjure gigs. You start a brass quintet. You call around. You put out flyers. You start doing recitals. You get gigs.
That’s the thing. You learn that as a creative musician. We make it happen.
You get a gig. The gig doesn’t find you.
We never say, “The gig got me.” We say, “I got the gig,” because we go out and we make it happen.
It was pretty fun those first few years just crafting something brand new.
Mike Zimmerlich: So you mentioned going from PreSonus over to Hal Leonard.
Now you have a very extensive background in music performance, music education, but now also working on the music tech side of things, on the gear, on audio tech.
So now you have that experience with both PreSonus and Hal Leonard as well. Obviously, sheet music.
You have all this experience, and I’m curious because you mentioned that you applied for the position for CEO of NAMM.
Was that your decision, or did they come to you?
00:21:00 From Hal Leonard to NAMM
John Mlynczak: Good question.
I’ll paint one more piece that we sort of went over.
Hal Leonard, if you know sheet music, at the time was in mass expansion mode.
Hal Leonard started a distribution division. They were distributing products because Hal Leonard realized that they were shipping sheet music to 5,000 dealers a month.
They started doing Sibelius, then they bought a company called Noteflight, online notation out of Boston, and then they started adding more products.
They got really good at distribution.
Where I got in, at PreSonus we made curriculum. We had all kinds of things. I was going to dealers, but the dealers servicing schools were not the dealers that were used to PreSonus.
That was a disconnect. PreSonus was in all the recording dealers.
So Hal Leonard became our distributor for all of our school sales.
I was the link between Hal Leonard distributing all the PreSonus gear, and Hal Leonard was writing curriculum that I was managing projects for, getting authors and all that.
Hal Leonard was becoming a really fast-paced technology company too, trying to be their own disruptor because print music was out, internet was in.
This was like 2013 to 2020.
It was all of this fast-paced time of, “How do we get ahead of the next thing? The world is changing fast. Buying a piece of sheet music in a retail store is a thing of the past. How do we get ahead?”
That was my job.
I started in Boston. I ran the Noteflight team. I ran the music ed team. I did distribution.
Later, me being Vice President of Music and Technology, which was a made-up role for me, figuring out how we get ahead, which leads me to the NAMM job.
Back to things that were always amazing at the time, and then the world changed.
Trade shows, associations, and then COVID.
COVID happens. NAMM Show doesn’t happen. Everything goes online.
Mass consolidation in the industry.
You look at our industry and a lot of industries, how many people own, any one company has like 10 subsidiary companies now.
Mass consolidation and rapid online and direct-to-consumer relationships changed the value proposition of the traditional trade show, where I have to go to a place as a dealer to meet my manufacturer to make a deal.
We were doing that online.
Dealers are dwindling. Manufacturers are consolidating. Dealers are consolidating.
What’s the value proposition of a trade show? How is technology going to disrupt that?
Funny enough, the only reason I’m CEO of NAMM today, I truly believe, is that NAMM’s need was the next leader.
They needed a CEO that was like, “How do we get NAMM, how do we figure out what NAMM is after this major technology disruption?”
I call COVID a technology disruption because COVID forced every manufacturer, every dealer, to have an online buying portal and connect every single day.
So no more, come to the NAMM Show and make your first six months of the year deal. They’re doing it every day.
COVID, obviously, YouTube became the rise of the influencer creator. Everyone was a podcaster during COVID.
Then the way to communicate new product launches, you don’t wait until January. You product launch when it’s ready through a nice YouTube campaign and influencer.
What I say this to say is, NAMM did not approach me.
Other people in the industry said, “Hey, you should consider this NAMM job.”
A lot of people kept telling me.
I’m like, “Nope, not ready. Too young, not ready, not the guy. Nope.”
They’re like, “No, no, no, John, we think you should apply to this NAMM job.”
I heard one of the big things was, this is a figure-out-what-happens-next-through-technology role, and my whole career had been based on this.
I’m going to figure out how to use this technology and take it to a new market.
Hal Leonard, I’m going to figure out how to take this technology and get it digital and expand the market.
So it was kind of like, again, right time, right place.
In a different circumstance, I might not be the best person for this job. But in that circumstance, at that time, I got asked enough to finally say, “You know what? The worst they can do is say no. I’m going to put my name in and see where this goes.”
I did eventually put my name in and start talking to the hiring committee.
It was an external hiring committee. It was a nine-month process. Big old thing, which was kind of fun.
Mike Zimmerlich: Wow. That’s truly incredible.
It’s interesting to see the shift, especially of the NAMM Show over the last five or six years.
But I did want to ask you, before we get into the show itself, for those who are not familiar, because as I mentioned before, I talk about the NAMM Show quite a bit on the podcast.
00:26:00 What NAMM Does and Why It Matters
Mike Zimmerlich: For those who aren’t familiar with what NAMM is, can you give me your definition of what NAMM is?
John Mlynczak: Yeah.
The NAMM Show is the world’s largest music products trade show. It is held every year in Anaheim.
It brings together currently people from 125 countries, where every manufacturer sets up booths, retail, artist, brand.
The NAMM Show has been, for 125 years, the industry’s gathering, their annual gathering of where we come together and celebrate all that’s ahead and work together.
NAMM as an association was founded in 1901 by a group of piano dealers because in 1901, 25% of the population had a piano in their home and knew how to play it.
Imagine a society that musically literate.
The home piano business was booming, but NAMM was founded in 1901 by piano dealers that wanted to get together and fight, get this, counterfeit products and align on creating more music makers.
Nothing’s changed, really.
NAMM for 125 years has been an association that has gathered the industry.
It’s been the central place where our board of directors, which is made up of now manufacturers and retailers, it’s evolved a lot over the years, come together.
It thinks about not only the NAMM Show, but NAMM is the driving force behind the success of the music products industry.
The industry comes together and says, “What do we need?”
Even though we’re competitors, retailer, manufacturer, we’re all competing, what’s the me? What’s the we?
NAMM as an organization, we’re a nonprofit association, we are that force.
What that’s always been is the board and the members coming together with ideas and saying, “Well, what do we need?”
We need an annual gathering where we can not only get everyone in the same place face-to-face, but also create more buzz around our industry and elevate our industry so the world thinks about musical products in a way that they’re not going to think about the other 51 weeks a year.
Two, we need an association that’s going to be our voice.
We need someone that goes to the government and says, “Hey, these policies are really bad. Putting tariffs on instruments that children buy is not good for us.”
So we’ve been that voice, that association.
We need someone to be our watchdog. We need someone to look at compliance, policy, all these things that could affect our business.
We’re running the business, so NAMM, if there’s a new law or policy or something coming down the pipe that could hurt our business, monitor it and let us know what we need to do.
So that’s that association action piece, and we do that all the time, obviously tariffs and music ed advocacy.
The last piece, certainly not least, is the industry has always agreed since 1901, if we could just make more customers, life would be so much better.
We recognize as competitors, we’re fighting for our slice of the pie, but if the whole pie gets bigger and we all keep the same market share, we’re actually all getting bigger.
We always want to be bigger.
So we can do that through lobbying for music ed funding in schools, advocating for music education, fighting policy decisions that could hurt the arts, funding new music education, which is the NAMM Foundation.
The NAMM Foundation gives over a million dollars a year in funding to music programs across all segments of the industry that create more music makers and retain music makers.
NAMM is the driving force behind an industry who wants to work together to be successful.
Mike Zimmerlich: Which I very much appreciate.
I’m glad that there are organizations like NAMM that are out there that are still advocating on behalf of music merchants.
Because it goes down the line, right?
If the music merchants are thriving, they’re going to be able to provide the instruments, the core material, if you will, for people to create music.
It all stems from there.
Whether it’s the kid that’s just starting off that has a basic synth or has their first trumpet or whatever the case is, all the way up to having a full recording studio.
It’s the whole line.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure that musical instruments and gear and software and all those things are accessible because that’s what helps us create this music and get it out there.
John Mlynczak: I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Even the name Music Merchants, we’ve expanded so much. I think it might as well stand for nearly all music makers because that’s who we think about all the time.
I think it’s really important.
Our core membership is definitely businesses. We never forget that our core value is to the companies making, selling, manufacturing, distributing, and selling instruments. That’s our core.
But those people depend on us to create more artists, to create more educators, to have influencers elevate their brands.
That’s why the NAMM Show expansion, which I know you’re going to talk about next, is so important.
That’s why what the NAMM Show is today, the evolved NAMM Show, is really, really necessary to our industry right now.
Mike Zimmerlich: I completely agree.
I’d love to talk about the NAMM Show.
As I mentioned before, I’ve been an attendee of the NAMM Show for over 10 years, and I’ve had the honor of speaking at pretty much every single year I’ve been going to NAMM.
There’s a reason why it’s one of my favorite events every single year, and I go to a lot of conferences.
NAMM in particular is one that I always look forward to.
The reason why is because of the communal effort of what NAMM represents.
Yes, at its core, if you will, it’s a trade show. It’s for merchants to talk to dealers and buyers and so forth.
But what I really appreciate about it and what really drove me to wanting to continue to go was that person that I haven’t seen since literally the last NAMM Show that I get to run into again.
That could be a musician, an artist, could be a producer, but also a lot of times it is the vendors themselves.
There are people that I consider close friends now that the only time I actually get to see them in person is at this event.
For me personally, there’s a lot to be said about this where it is a celebration of music at the end of the day.
It’s been shown throughout everything that the NAMM Show has done.
One of the traditions is the drum circle, where people can get together and just play on the drums. I love those types of traditions.
Also just the performances themselves, everything from the massive stages that are outside to the smaller performances at the halls themselves.
That’s what I really appreciate about the NAMM Show.
It’s not just about dealer meeting with the buyer.
I think that might have been the original plan over time, but over time it has now come to become so much more than just that.
Even the educational aspects. It’s the programming that’s involved, that I’ve been such an honor to be a part of.
It’s the meetups that everyone does.
It’s all these things that are all combined that truly make the NAMM Show something special.
John Mlynczak: Well, thank you for that. You’re hired.
NAMM’s mission, as an association, our mission is to strengthen the music products industry and promote the pleasures and benefits of making music.
The duality there is really important because our job, and anyone that works nonprofit and anyone that works education, is you have to have a strong mission and you’ve got to stick to it.
Don’t get caught up by mission creep. Don’t get strayed. Don’t get bloated. Focus on the mission.
When you think about the NAMM Show and how the NAMM Show fulfills a large part of our mission, our job is to strengthen the music products industry and promote the pleasures and benefits.
The concerts, the drum circle, the network and the education, the foundation, the NAMM Gives Back campaign, the grantees that perform all around the campus now, that’s promoting the pleasures and benefits.
The influencers that are out there tallying 70 million views, that’s promoting.
Strengthening the music products industry, evolving from the traditional trade show model, pre-internet, pre-everything that’s happened in the past 40 years, is a one-to-one relationship.
It’s like an omnichannel relationship now.
We strengthen the music products industry because, yes, buyers and retailers and manufacturers and distributors and suppliers can meet in one place with their suppliers from all over the world.
That strengthens.
But having those artists, those endorsed artists in the booth and on the stages demoing that product, with an influencer showing that out and capturing brand content, that strengthens the industry.
Getting educators there and understanding how important the industry is, and weaving that into what educators teach through their school districts all year, that strengthens the industry.
The growth of it, we think of it as one large event that serves the overall purpose of strengthening the industry.
But we need the artists, we need the influencers, and we need all those components to work together because, as an industry, we all need each other to elevate ourselves.
Mike Zimmerlich: I’ve also noticed that too, as a content creator, the initiatives that NAMM has been doing in the last couple of years to support that.
I’m glad that you mentioned the influencers and realizing how powerful that is to have them be present at the event because, like you said, it helps elevate all the vendors that attend that.
I noticed there have been creator lounges and events and things like that over the last couple of years.
I think that was a very good idea because now creators feel like they’re a part of it rather than just being an attendee.
They’re actually now a part of the entire conference itself, and I think that was a very, very smart move.
00:37:00 How the NAMM Show Is Evolving
John Mlynczak: Well, yeah, thank you for that. That’s a big piece of it.
The big transition, back to what does a post-COVID NAMM look like? What is a NAMM Show?
I do a lot of research on other trade shows. I’ve got magazines, all kinds of trade show stuff here because I look at all these other industries too.
What makes a successful gathering? Why?
Because we’re not responsible for a trade show. We’re responsible for the success of the entire industry, and we don’t take that lightly.
When you think about the power of the NAMM Show, we’ve moved away from just, the NAMM Show is about brands writing orders to dealers and making dealer-to-dealer deals.
It’s not about launching new products and making a big Q1 order.
To some, they still do that. I’m not devaluing what happened and what still happens.
But the purpose of an event like NAMM now, the NAMM Show now, is for brands to build and sustain a brand.
They’re there to build and sustain a brand.
We live in a world, Michael, you and I could start a product right now, High Note Heaven.
We’re going to get a CNC machine. We’re going to have Claude write us a CAD, and we’re going to program it in, and we’re going to make mouthpieces that are just shy of a dented nickel, and we’re going to call it High Note Heaven.
We’re going to go on Amazon and we’re going to buy a bunch of fake reviews. We’re going to do a nice video package that Claude’s going to produce for us, and we’re going to have a product out in the world, direct-to-consumer, competing.
We could do this in a week, you and I.
Mike Zimmerlich: Yep.
John Mlynczak: I’m not saying we’re going to do it.
Mike Zimmerlich: No, no, I know.
John Mlynczak: That’s the world.
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah.
John Mlynczak: That world didn’t exist 20 years ago, but right now, today, we could do that.
In fact, we could do that before the product’s available, and we have a global marketplace to get it out and compete.
This is the same of an artist.
The product version of an artist being like, “Oh, I used to have to play the gigs, and then I got a deal, and then I got studio time, and then I was on radio, so I made it.”
Wait. Anyone can be on Spotify in a minute, and anyone can go viral with the right kind of social quirk and suddenly be discovered.
The playing field is leveled for everyone.
Whether you’re an artist or a product person, we live in an online world and an AI world where we can create content and build websites and vibe code and design.
The entry point is so low right now, it’s like a free-for-all of competition.
So what does a NAMM Show do?
A NAMM Show brands. It elevates brands. It tells the story of brands.
It tells the story of brands that are out there investing in the industry, growing music education, supporting their local community, working with their local retailer.
The brands that are successful are the ones you see in retail, are the ones that are giving back, that have foundations, that are working.
But we’re all now competing with Average Joe consumer going on an average marketplace site, finding 20 other competitive products that no one’s ever heard of, and the next generations coming up.
How do we keep successful in that world?
Come together as an industry. You join NAMM. We help you work together.
We give you education at the show. We give you more ways to elevate your brand.
The NAMM Show is where the top brands of the industry are found.
It’s how you build your brand.
None of that existed even 10 years ago.
The idea of creating a marketing campaign and a product design and being on Amazon. I know Amazon existed 10 years ago, but not like it does today.
Mike Zimmerlich: The other thing too is that it makes the product human.
John Mlynczak: Mm-hmm.
Mike Zimmerlich: I think that’s a big part of it as well.
One of the things that I always appreciated about going to the NAMM Show is the fact that I get to talk to the people behind the scenes.
I get to talk to the person that’s the head of artist relations, or sometimes even the engineers themselves, or even the founders of the company.
It’s the most amazing thing when you ask them like, “Oh, what do you have out right now?” and to see themselves get excited about, “Oh yeah, you’ve got to check out this we have over here,” or, “You’ve got to check out this over here that we’re launching soon.”
That excitement and talking to them about what they’re seeing and how they’re trying to help solve a problem or make something that is going to add a new creative element to making music.
To me, those are the people that I like to connect with because then, in turn, that’s why I’m going to tell my artists or other people in the industry, “You’ve got to check out this company.”
It’s not just, I like the product, which also you get to test in person. How often can you do that these days?
Not just reading Google reviews or Amazon reviews or anything like that, actually getting to see these products in person and seeing them in action.
Then also saying, “You know what? This product’s amazing. Also, the team’s incredible too. I feel taken care of. I feel like if I had an issue, I can contact them and my issue will be taken care of, and that they really do appreciate the musicians that they’re supporting.”
John Mlynczak: That’s one of the on-brand trends of trade shows now, and just conferences and gatherings that we look at. It’s audience experience.
The NAMM Show ’27 is deeply focused on audience experience, and wait until you see what we’re unveiling for ’28.
Audience experience is key.
One of the trade show research things we looked at, of why we’re successful and why we’re on trend with other successful conferences and gatherings, is that audiences can experience the company.
Not just the salespeople, but the product managers, the executives. That’s who the audience wants to have interactions with.
In a world of AI, human intelligence is more important than ever.
People want to know what is human and have those interactions.
We’re actually launching an exhibitor training series this year, where we’re doing a series of webinars and one-to-one calls with exhibitors, just talking about, “Hey, here’s what you should do to be successful in an audience-experience world. Here’s what an audience-experience booth looks like,” and helping our companies understand how to get the most out of it.
One of the tips is, don’t just send your salespeople. Send your company.
People want interaction with who’s making your products, who’s developing, who’s marketing.
They want that human interaction with you as a brand.
Do it in a way that an influencer can come to your booth and feel that, and then go tell your story for the next six to nine months.
We’re actively working with companies to create that experience because the audience-experience point is absolutely key.
Mike Zimmerlich: It really is.
What’s great too is that this applies to both small and large companies.
You mentioned before about top companies.
One of the things that I also appreciate about the NAMM Show is, we used to call it the basement for the longest time.
At the Anaheim Convention Center, there was the basement level, and for a long time that was where all the smaller companies would be based.
Some of the more obscure ones would sometimes be down there, the ones that are just getting started.
That’s always fun.
I’ll be with a group of people and go, “Let’s go to the basement and see what’s down there.”
It’s so exciting to see when there’s a company that starts in the basement and they almost graduate and they go up to the main level.
They graduate upstairs.
It’s always exciting when I see them the next year and go, “Oh, you graduated. You’re now up upper level.”
But that’s also something that I really appreciate, that even the smaller companies have the chance to have that booth set up and, as you mentioned, have that audience experience that they normally wouldn’t have.
They’re starting to build the connections with the retailers, but they may not even have it yet.
So this is a great way for having a direct link to their customers and getting that immediate feedback from them as far as what they’re getting excited about.
Do they understand what the product is?
Just gathering that information is so priceless, especially when you’re getting it in person.
John Mlynczak: In addition to that, what we’ve learned over the past couple years, back to 2027 being the evolved NAMM, we’ve also realized that digital presence is just as important as physical presence.
The booth is your physical presence. It’s got to have a design. It’s got to have a place where you’re going to capture people in the aisles.
But your digital presence, we had 60,000 attendees last year. We had 150,000 unique people hit the map because people in the world are like, “Hey, what’s at NAMM?”
We’re offering new ways this year for exhibitors to enhance their map because it’s actually like real estate.
What’s on the map is searchable.
Exhibitors can now add additional information, links, videos. They can add in-booth sessions.
They can create this sort of digital experience where people can actually interact with the brand.
When the map opens September 23rd, people can interact with that brand all the way up to the show.
That’s actually a really awesome way to expand that.
In addition, back to the influencers, there’s the content that gets pushed out, the outbound piece.
Any brand can work with influencers, create a strategy, use NAMM as a content-capture buzz to capture the week that everyone’s really paying attention to the thing, but also have content that makes them successful for the next six to nine months after that.
We’re looking at NAMM now as year-round, where when the map opens September 23rd, NAMM Show has started.
The NAMM Show ends when the last deal, when the last customer sees the last piece of content that influences a decision from the previous NAMM Show.
That might be five years later. Who knows?
We’re thinking about it in a much different way because the digital and physical connection is really important, and it definitely changes what exhibitors do with their booths and how they plan.
We’re having a lot of really good conversations with companies about, what does their booth look like today that’s not just a closed-door meeting room?
They need a brand experience.
We have 24,000 artists at the NAMM Show looking for a brand experience.
We have thousands of influencers generating 70 million views of content.
A brand experience.
And by the way, artists, you can come to the NAMM Show. Registration opens September 9th. Sorry, shameless plug.
Mike Zimmerlich: No, no, please. I’ll advocate NAMM all day long.
That’s the thing too. It’s a big gathering ground for artists.
Sometimes when I talk to artists and they’re asking, “Where can I network?”
Even though NAMM is meant for music merchants on that particular level, I tell them the NAMM Show, besides the fact of obviously getting to check out new gear and products, there are so many musicians and artists that go to the NAMM Show, and it’s a great way to connect with them as well.
These are, as you mentioned, people that are coming from all over the world that are coming to this event.
So yeah, it’s big.
John Mlynczak: Education.
I mean, we have hundreds of education sessions, especially on recording, marketing.
We’re doing artist-specific education, like building your own brand, independent artists, label, AI.
It is one of the best education events.
If you went to the NAMM Show and never walked the floor, which is absolutely silly, but let’s just say, it would be worth it just for all the education, much less going out and hearing all the music, the people you run into, and then the direct interaction with the products.
We really look at that.
We look at the products. We look at the artist experience.
Then the other side is the professional production area.
We have a whole hall where everyone that’s filling arenas with speakers and lights and front-of-house consoles and audio engineers, all that’s happening in ACC North.
We have the production stage live sector, we have the music instrument sector, and we have the artist, and it all comes together.
It’s kind of like three experiences under one roof.
Mike Zimmerlich: It really is.
Well, we can talk all day long about NAMM, but I do want to make sure that we have enough time.
So I do want to wrap up with a couple of fun questions for you.
First question for you is, what was the very first concert that you ever went to?
John Mlynczak: Alan Jackson. My grandma took me when I was in like third grade.
Mike Zimmerlich: That’s nice. That’s a good one.
Do you have a go-to artist right now that you like to listen to?
John Mlynczak: The last artist I listened to was actually Miles Davis.
I was hanging with a buddy, and I’m like, “I’m just feeling something cool and jazz.”
I’m like, “Hold on. Nope, that, done.”
Mike Zimmerlich: Nice. Miles is always a good one.
I’m more of a Chet Baker fan myself, but you can’t deny...
John Mlynczak: Who doesn’t?
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah. I love the man’s speaking.
To me, Chet is like the definition of cool.
If you ever listen to Chet Baker, he’s even more cool than Miles is.
You listen to the way he plays, and it’s just so laid-back, and then he sings.
It’s just like, oh man, just the chillest, chillest dude ever.
John Mlynczak: I will not even argue with this, even though I’m a trumpet player and I’m supposed to argue with you.
We’re not supposed to get along, Michael.
Mike Zimmerlich: I know we’re not supposed to.
00:52:00 Follow Every Path Your Passion Can Take You
Mike Zimmerlich: All right, last question for you.
If you were only able to give one piece of advice, what would that one piece of advice be?
John Mlynczak: Am I giving advice to your audience?
Mike Zimmerlich: I would say whatever comes to the top of your mind. I’ll put it that way this time.
John Mlynczak: Follow your passion and follow every path that your passion can lead you on.
Absolutely.
Just because it’s worked for me, if you’re following your passion and you’re open to any path that your passion can take you, you will find opportunities that you did not know exist.
Do not self-select yourself into, “I can only do this job,” or, “I can only do this thing.”
Follow your passion.
If you’re authentically passionate and working really hard for what you believe in and love, and you’re willing to open any door and walk down any path, even if you’re not sure where it leads, you’ll be very surprised at how much will come your way.
Mike Zimmerlich: Couldn’t agree more.
That’s something that I’ve learned later in life, but I always apply towards.
It’s an amazing journey once you keep your doors open as far as where it leads.
It’s amazing when you know what your passions are and what drives you, but you’re open to the path that it takes.
It’ll take you to places you never thought were possible.
John Mlynczak: That’s exactly right.
Mike Zimmerlich: John, thank you so much for being on the show. I really greatly appreciate it.
I hope to see you at the NAMM Show. I definitely will be there.
I’m definitely looking forward to that map as well, and as you mentioned, registration should be opening up soon as well.
Thank you so much for being on the show. Really do appreciate it.
John Mlynczak: Thank you so much. I’m looking forward to seeing you and anyone that’s listening at the NAMM Show.