2022 Winter NAMM Show Moved To June In Response To Global Pandemic Realities

The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) today announced the cancellation of next year’s Winter NAMM Show and Summer NAMM Show, and that instead they are planning on a single NAMM Show event, to be held in Anaheim, California at the Anaheim Convention Center on June 3–5, 2022.

Originally scheduled for January 20–23, the event is moving to summer in response to the realities of the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. The US is in the midst of a fourth wave of infection, some California hospital intensive care units are over their capacity, the state has put restrictions in place for conventions and global travel planning continues to be difficult.

“As the health and safety of our members remains top of mind, and after carefully listening to companies here in the U.S. and around the world, the new dates will help members maximize their opportunities and accelerate what has arguably been a transformative time both in new products and in how they come to market,” notes NAMM President and CEO Joe Lamond.

NAMM says that the change in dates addresses ongoing concerns about pandemic activity, new product development and launches, available in-store inventory, and current travel restrictions. Organizers say that the change was met with support from the industry.

“Global travel restrictions continue to be unpredictable and challenging for our industry. Rescheduling the NAMM Show to June is absolutely the right call,” says David Via, Zoom North America Vice President of Marketing.

“We fully support NAMM’s decision to move the 2022 NAMM Show to June,” says Larry Morton, CEO of Hal Leonard. “Not only does this make sense from a public safety standpoint, but the June timing gives the entire music products industry an opportunity to put the pandemic behind us. ”

With the move of The 2022 NAMM Show to June, the organization has decided not to hold Summer NAMM in Nashville, Tennessee in 2022, effectively combining the two shows.

26 thoughts on “2022 Winter NAMM Show Moved To June In Response To Global Pandemic Realities

  1. Admin: Comment deleted, misinformation being presented as fact rather than opinion.

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  2. This is the only real option for them, but I remain skeptical about holding something like this even in June, given how the anti-vaxxer crowd has hosed the country’s pandemic response.

    It’s pretty much all anti-vaxxers getting hospitalized and dying now, which was completely avoidable but affects all of us.

      1. food4thought – You’re making a pretty dumb straw man argument.

        You’re the only one stating that “all anti-vaxxers are dying”, and you support this statement with squat.

      2. he isn’t saying all antivaxxers are dying, he is saying that all of the deaths are anti vaxxers – so yes that is only like 10% or so of the unvaccinated people that get it leaving 90% of the unvaccinated people that get it to spread and breed variants. There are something in the range of 8-10% hospitalized that are vaccinated that are overwhelmingly elderly and/or immunocompromised but if you are vaccinated you can still become infected and spread it – just for a shorter duration of time. Vaccination doesn’t create a magical bubble that covid bounces off of you when it comes near you, it teaches your system how to combat it. I am sorry that you want to boil science down to semantics but viruses don’t care about semantics.

  3. With the catastrophic situation in the US right now, they probably had no choice but to postpone. Many foreign exhibitors would have cancelled their attendance due to health concerns and travel restrictions anyway, and the remaining would have feared the negative publicity of being linked to a potential super spreading event. So good call for sure.

    1. The sky isn’t really falling. I am fully vaccinated and enjoying life. Not worrying myself about others and making music. I’d like to see more hardware and less Covid.

    1. The current situation in Germany is very different from the US. We have less than 100 infections per 100k people, the US has almost 400. We have stricter rules regarding masks, distancing and public hygiene, a higher percentage of fully vaccinated people and larger remaining capacities in hospitals. And finally, SuperBooth is a tiny event mostly attended by locals, while NAMM is a huge global trade show. So frankly, comparing these two events doesn’t make any sense in my eyes.

      1. that is an over generalization though – I am in California and we have 24.4 cases per 100k if you are going to talk about the US rate you should compare that to all of Europe and not just Germany

        1. The “whole Sonicstate team” (which is like what, 4 people?) does not change the fact that SuperBooth is a small event mostly attended by locals. The largest SB so far in 2019 attracted 7500 people, while a regular NAMM show has more than 115k visitors. This year’s SB will even be much smaller due to the restrictions in place. You have been trying to frame SB as a super spreader event for a couple of weeks here in the comments now, but I still have not seen you make a single valid argument.

  4. Admin: Comment deleted, misinformation stated as fact.

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  5. I was intrigued by Joe Lamond’s final sentence in that press release: “The new dates will help members maximize their opportunities and accelerate what has arguably been a transformative time, both in new products and in how they come to market. I imagine this gathering will have the kind of impact of a Beatles moment or the introduction of MIDI—definitely one you will not want to miss.”

    It made me wonder about the relative impact of the Beatles and MIDI today. In a quick Google search, I got 177 million Google results for Beatles and 622 million for MIDI. Not a very precise comparison, of course, but even MIDI controller got 62 million hits.

    1. MIDI is one of the most successful standards of all time. I read a statement once that MIDI is supported on billions of devices, because of support on mobile devices and computers. I don’t know if phones & computers still support MIDI out of the box though.

    1. Americans with a PhD are the most hesitant when it comes to getting the Covid-19 vaccine. Also Pfizer’s has quite a interesting history including a record-breaking $1.3 billion criminal fine.

      1. Don’t worry, the vaccine was developed by the German company BioNTech anyway. They just label it as Pfizer in the US to make Americans feel good 😉

  6. Why don’t the major synth companies just roll out videos on YouTube + post specifics + additional A/V on their websites in January – just like what was done with the new Hydrasynth? It was done when COVID first came out.

  7. I think this is a sensible move, and its likely that the June event will need to restrict physical admission to those who have done the right thing and been fully vaccinated. For the rest, I’m sure an online access as well as watching the news coming out on blogs such as synthtopia and sonic state will suffice.

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