Hart's Dynamic Media Blog

(I wrote this on Saturday but didn't post it until today. I guess I was tired enough to forget to post once I got in!)

I'm on my way back from NAMM now (it's another on-the-plane post), tired and a bit bleary-eyed but excited about my personal whirlwind couple days down there. I came in the night before the show opened and had a packed two days talking to partners, the press, and customers about 2.0.

One of the things that struck me was just how crowded the whole show was. I walked onto the floor just a few minutes after the show had opened and I think it's the most packed I had seen the aisles in several years. In fact, almost everyone I talked to commented on how bustling the whole show was, from hall E with the folks who sell wood for violins to the rooms upstairs with wall-to-wall pianos, and everything in between. I'm guessing the music industry is a trailing indicator of the economy as a whole, since so much of it is driven as a passion once the basic needs (food, shelter) have been taken care of. If that's the case than the economy is trucking along here in North America at least--I've been to a lot of tradeshows that have been shrinking over the last few years, and NAMM was relatively slow the last couple years, but it was as big as ever this year. I think every space in the convention center that could have been used had a booth on it.

My personal winner of the hippest booth concept had to be Access Music, the folks that make the samplers, with their hanging rope wall. I’m not sure how inviting it made the booth, but it certainly stood out!

My winner of the most fun new product I saw had to go to Sibelius, who was showing a new sequencing product called Groovy which is specifically designed for teaching elementary school kids about music creation. Anything that helps teach more music theory to kids seems like a great thing to me.

I only wish I had the time to stay an extra day just for some time on the floor. I always feel like I’ve missed half the show and this year was no exception. I hardly saw any of the hardware on display, and was only able to check out a handful of demos. Ah, NAMM. It’s always interesting, always exhausting, and always LOUD.