NAMM president and CEO, Joe Lamond, has spoken to Headliner about the return of the show on June 3, the rebuilding job behind the scenes and why he believes there is a “great period of growth ahead” for the music and pro audio industries.
From June 3-5, the NAMM show returns to the Anaheim Convention Centre, California, for its first in-person outing in over two years. The last time the industry gathered for the annual expo was in January 2020, just weeks before the Covid outbreak that would stop the world in its tracks. In 2021, a digital iteration of the NAMM Show, dubbed Believe In Music, provided an online alternative, whereby participants could come together in the virtual world to check out the latest new product releases, interact with all manner of educational content and catch-up with colleagues via video call.
While Believe In Music certainly served its purpose, it was never going to function as a like-for-like replacement for the real thing. And, as Lamond explains during our conversation, the prospect of another year without an in-person NAMM Show was not something that he and the show’s organisers were willing to contemplate.
Here, we speak to Lamond about the decision to hold this year’s NAMM Show in June, what attendees can expect from this unique edition of the show and what the future holds for the market in 2022 and beyond…
How did you go about planning for this edition of the NAMM Show?
It’s almost been a case of looking at it as a start-up. It’s always been consistent, but because there are so many differences and not having done one in a couple of years, the labour pool has completely changed - not only the people who work on the production of the show but also a lot of the companies we work with. We are working with a lot of exhibitors this year who have never before done a show, so there is a lot of muscle memory that’s been lost. It’ll be a lot smaller, about half the size it was in 2020, which was the high point of 120 years of NAMM’s history. Now we need to reset and find that balance again.
Does approaching the show in this way present new opportunities?
This period has been a time of introspection and analysis – how can we do things differently? How can we do things better? I have this unique position of seeing all the companies, from guitar and keyboards to software, and everyone is trying to figure out what has changed permanently, what is going to come back, and what is still in this temporary distortion. The fundamentals of NAMM’s work is still to bring people together. Is that big, open plan with mega booths? We’re seeing a real demand this June from companies that simply want meeting rooms. There are still companies that want that traditional experience, but there are others who simply want a business platform. My view is that when people are back together again – and that is still new for a lot of people, especially with international travel – there is a euphoria that is palpable. And we miss that. The pandemic took a lot of that away from us. Everybody has had such different experiences and coming together to share all that and make sense of it allows us to look over the edge and say ‘what’s next’? I believe there is a very strong growth period ahead of us after this. Historically, that is what happens… for those that take advantage of it.