In February of 2023, as the world slowly began to resume normalcy from the COVID lockdown, one of the biggest questions lingering in the music industry was what the NAMM Show would look like moving forward. With everything trending to online presence and people still timid about large social gatherings, the uncertainty could be felt by gear companies and musicians alike, who were all waiting to see what the future would hold. This is precisely when John Mlynczak took over as president and CEO of NAMM. Despite the tremendous task at hand of leading the largest music convention into the unfamiliar post-COVID era, he immediately made his intentions clear to evolve and expand the over a century old event to make it bigger and better than ever before.

Born into a largely musical family, Mlynczak took up the trumpet at a young age and went on to becoming a gigging musician in New Orleans, where his love of jazz and background in classical music opened him up to all styles of music. While he kept his focus on performing, he went on to earn his Bachelor of Music Education degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, and Masters degrees in both Music Performance and Education Leadership from Louisiana State University. Deciding to focus more on the education side of music technology, he became the president of Technology Institute of Music Educators and a certified Google Level 2 Educator. From there he served as Director of Education at PreSonus Audio. Before taking the position of CEO of NAMM, he served as the Vice President of Music Education & Technology at Hal Leonard.

With his experience in music education, technology, and leadership, Mlynczak immediately went to work focusing on how to utilize tech to make the NAMM Show benefit its members and exhibitors in a way that would be immediately notable to all attendees. Focusing on relationship-building and aiding in connections on the NAMM Show floor, he effectively steered the convention from uncertainty back to prominence. As the 2026 NAMM Show approaches on what will be its 125th anniversary, he and his dedicated staff are preparing to unveil the next chapter for the largest event in the world of music.

How does it feel to be the President and CEO of one of the largest music resources and communities in the world?

First of all, it’s an incredible honor. There’s not a lot of industries where the name of the association is synonymous with the entire industry. The people in music say NAMM and it could mean a trade show and an association, but it encompasses our whole industry. That’s the power of existing for 125 years. So of course, it’s an honor but it’s definitely a service job. It’s managing a non-profit, but the industry looks to NAMM as the reputation industry. That goes back to the people we have in our office and the way we carry ourselves and the way we work together; it sets the tone. They say “heavy is the crown” and I feel the weight of needing to always set the tone for how we as an industry interact and move forward. I don’t take for granted any day or any action the NAMM staff takes.

The people in music say NAMM and it could mean a trade show and an association, but it encompasses our whole industry. That’s the power of existing for 125 years.

What were your main goals when you took the position of CEO of NAMM?

I took over in 2023, which was still right in the middle of COVID, and in a lot of ways our industry was just getting out of COVID as late as 2025. We had a lot of supply chain issues and fallback from everything that happened in that span. The immediate goal was to figure out exactly what being back looked like. The 2020 benchmark of the massive show that NAMM was then mixed with everything that happened following, so we knew we were moving forward instead of going backwards. We needed to identify what moving forward looked like and what the industry will look like in ten years. That’s been a lot of the push. One of the main revelations was examining what the evolution is for trade shows in general. You look at a trade show pre-COVID and post-COVID. We closely looked at what it is we are selling. We’re not selling exhibit space; we’re selling brand demand. That’s what exhibitors want. We have to think differently to the point that the transaction is the transaction, but what we’re delivering is demand. The return on investment is the most brand demand that you’re going to get in five days that you’re not going to get in the other 360 days of the year. We also look at how we can deliver for the rest of the year for these brands. Another big part of this is looking at how we activate Anaheim, like in the way that Bass Magazine is partnering with us to bring your awards show to it.

An event of this magnitude takes so much time and so many people to plan. What is that process like? 

The NAMM full time team is around 60 people. A trade show takes about 18 months to plan. Just today we had a 2027 planning meeting. You always have to know where you’re going. We have a product that we get to show five days out of the year. It’s like performing where with each one you learn and get better from it for the next one, but our performances happen to be 360 days apart. So what we’re doing in this coming January is a step towards what we’re doing in 2027, 2028, and 2029. That’s how far we have to look ahead to keep moving forward. Anything we’re doing in 2026 is either the growth of something that was successful before or a calculated experiment of what could be successful in 2027. We always have small tests of activities to see where it can go in bigger and better ways.

What is something about NAMM, as an organization, that most people commonly don’t realize? 

The thing about NAMM that I hope people understand is that we’re considered a platform business. Think of it like Airbnb. Airbnb owns no inventory, they don’t manage any properties, but what they do is cultivate thousands of people and partners and help them be as successful as possible at their business. Every exhibitor is like an Airbnb owner and we give the space, infrastructure, and technology to get them registered and get their booth to have their brand presence. We build this amazing platform and literally lease city property for two weeks. We build apps, we build maps, and we’re a massive customer service organization that helps companies make the most out of our platform, which is education and networking. The reason why our people are the best in the world is because we’re relationship people. It’s not just 1,850+ exhibitors, it’s all the various partners that go into making it—the contractors, the temp workers, the exhibit hall security, the catering, the hotels. Everyone has to come together to make this experience. It’s all about cultivating relationships and coming in with everybody having the same vibe that NAMM does. Everybody is important.

Before the show on Monday and Tuesday I get there early and I do meetings with all the partners like the head of security, the head of catering, the registration desk people, the cleaners, literally everyone. I tell them that I know that this is only week three of their full year of trade shows, but this isn’t a trade show, this is the NAMM Show. I want to pump them all up. I want them to work our show better than they work any of the other shows. We have this massive thing, but at the end of the day, we’re not in control of any of it. So, you have to be inspirational, and you have to get everyone to drive towards the magic that is the NAMM Show.

Everyone has to come together to make this experience. It’s all about cultivating relationships and coming in with everybody having the same vibe that NAMM does. Everybody is important.

What can attendees expect from this year’s event. 

It’s the 125th birthday of NAMM, so we’re going all out this year. We experimented last year with the five-day model, and it really worked, so we’re doing more activities Tuesday and Wednesday with more education. We’re going to get people fired up. The bands will get going in the hotels Tuesday night through Saturday, and it’s going to be a very big event with a lot of energy and a lot of things going on at all times. The number of big artists and influencers coming this year is huge. We’ve hired two new artist relations teams to really cultivate this. What you’ll see is incredible artists and a lot of activities with the latest technology. We’ve created a new app and new maps that will make it easier than ever to navigate everything and be in the know of what’s going on. We’ve rebuilt our entire platform from a technical standpoint and what that allows is people to connect better. Exhibitors can upload their events and attendees can search and filter their planners. The app is now open. We launched the app in October, and you can already download it and start using it to plan out your experience. Anyone who is registered is automatically in the app, just put your email in and it will know who you are.

After the disruption of COVID, it seems like everything is finally getting back to full force as far the large number of exhibitors and attendees. How does it feel to have much more momentum heading into this year’s event?

It feels a lot better now to have all the excitement back from 2023 when people were asking if NAMM was dead. This is a job that you don’t learn on day one. I’ll be learning on year 20 and you have to constantly be learning. Going into year three for me, I now know so well the NAMM staff and the vibe of the show and the focus on advanced technology and how to captivate the whole world, which is watching. We’ve figured it out. We know what we need to do and now we’re refining it and making it awesome. We’re in a good place. We can be more offensive now instead of defensive as we were when the show had to be virtual in 2021. It’s all data and AI that’s on the forefront, so we’re using that for the connections we can help make.

What does that look like?

The power of the NAMM Show is always the relationships you make while you’re there—both with the intentional meetings you set up and also the many random encounters you have. People bump elbows at the bar and that turns into valuable connections for them. Now we’re using AI suggestion on the app for who you should meet. We’re looking at a lot of what we can do to help the 75,000 people there connect to the 75 people who are specifically important for you to meet. Every person is individual. The bass community has very specific needs. You have instruments, amps, pedals, strings, accessories, and artists that are important to you. The drum community is different; the brass community is different. We’re not a show of 75,000 people, we’re a show of 75 1,000 person communities with individualized needs and interests. We use the right data and tools to help everybody with this.

We’re looking at a lot of what we can do to help the 75,000 people there connect to the 75 people who are specifically important for you to meet.

Changing gears from the show to your personal life, you are a trumpeter, which not everyone may know. How often do you get to play nowadays?

I had two lives before I was in the industry. One was being a music teacher, which is incredibly humbling and one of the hardest things to do. You think organizing the NAMM Show is hard? Try getting an eight-year-old to play saxophone [laughs]! It’s great to have that experience. The other was playing music at a very high level. Living the gig life where for six years every Friday night, every Saturday, and every Sunday morning I was gigging and playing. It was great to feel that energy because I know what these musicians are going for. I know how every connection you make is important. Being a gigging musician it’s all about the relationships. You get hired because people trust you. And secondly because you play the right notes. I keep a trumpet in my office and some mornings if I get here early enough, I’ll blow some notes and pick up the horn and just see what comes out. I miss playing constantly a lot. I wish I had 40 hours in a day.

Which style of music do you like to play most?

I studied classical trumpet playing and played in a lot of orchestras and then I got into playing in pits in musical theatre. I did big band and jazz. I lived in New Orleans so it’s all about jazz there. If you want a paying gig, wedding bands are where the money is. Sometimes you make music to make money and sometimes you make money to make music and they’re usually not the same. The music you make to make money is weddings, pit orchestras, and event gigs. The music I play for fun is jazz. I want to get back into it and dive into jazz to the point where I can be comfortable improvising over anything. There’s something so freeing about that to me coming from spending all of my time focusing on playing the right note from the page.

Sometimes you make music to make money and sometimes you make money to make music and they’re usually not the same. The music you make to make money is weddings, pit orchestras, and event gigs. The music I play for fun is jazz.

How and when did you first start playing music?

As early as I can remember. My dad met my mom because both of their dads were playing in the same band. My mom’s mother played piano at the church, my dad played guitar in a band, my grandfathers played in bands. Growing up in a musical family like that, as soon as I was crawling, I was trying to play everything I could. I would take sticks and play Tupperware like drums and grab my dad’s guitar to strum it. When I got to elementary school music class was all that mattered. To this day, if you see me type, I still only use two fingers because in school it was either music elective or computer elective. I never had another thought about what I wanted to do with my life. Whenever anyone would ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I would say a music teacher and a player. I went through music education, I got a master’s degree in trumpet, I moved to Louisiana, and I just went out and started gigging and teaching. I was 23 and I had made it. That was my life. Then probably by the time I was 27, I played all the gigs and got into new forms of teaching and went back and got a degree in education administration. I wanted something to allow me to go a level up.

Then I was teaching music technology at a time when no one else was doing it. The iPad had just come out and every kid had GarageBand, and I saw the potential there, so I just went for it. I was president of the Technology Institute, and I got heavily involved in teaching production. It landed me a gig with PreSonus Audio. They tried to give me a sales job and I refused it. I wasn’t going to work on commission; I wanted to teach people how to use their products. It kind of worked. It was a lot of fun to open that market as a product evangelist. Then it was funny because we actually sold a lot through that and I was like, wait, can I get a bonus commission for this [laughs]? Sales are a transaction, relationships and value are the proposition. You learn that very quickly. That’s essentially how I got into the industry. I don’t think you can do my job if you’re not empathetic to the people in the industry who are working their tails off for the love of music.

What are your currently listening to?

My commute is like eight minutes to the office and it’s down the beach on the Pacific Coast Highway, so I usually have the top down on my car and I just look at the ocean and take a quiet moment. But when I do my morning workouts, that’s my first meeting of the day and music enters the picture. I have a little home gym to get my body and mind ready to go because when you walk into the office door you have to be ready to go with this job. Usually during my workout it’s high energy music, like a lot of Kendrick Lamar and hip-hop energy. I have a lot of hype music right now.

I’d be remiss not to bring up NAMM pairing with Bass Magazine for our 2026 Awards show. 

I’m just thrilled. We were very excited here in the office to make this happen. Our focus is on the next ten years and the evolution of the trade show and what the NAMM show energy is. We want to make sure that NAMM actively empowers anything happening in Anaheim at that time and in turn, our partners empower NAMM. It’s 1+1=3 every time. Having the Bass Magazine Awards as an official part of NAMM just elevates everything about the week. It’s cheesy, but we say it: This is NAMM-aheim in NAMM-uary and we have to control that area to make it as impactful as possible. We’re happy to work together and amplify what you’re doing, very much pun intended. You’re setting the example and it’s going to be something we model our experiences on moving forward.

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