Jane Kaczmarek, the actress, said, "Awards shows are my greatest inducement to get back into shape." Awards shows are as much about looking good as doing well in the estimation of your peers, but they also are a reflection of the industries they celebrate. So it was meaningful when, last January, the TEC Awards program, which had been a fixture at the AES Show since its inception 26 years ago, moved instead to the Winter NAMM Show.
It was a symbolic move, but one with significant implications. The Winter NAMM Show has long been lampooned for its cartoonish covens of tattooed headbangers, but that's like suggesting that New Orleans is the sum of its Mardi Gras parade crews or its beads tossers. Those headbangers are, rather, the tassels on the very big economic engine known as MI (musical instruments) that's intersecting with professional audio – the rubric that most live sound goes under – on an annually-increasing basis. Winter NAMM 2011 had more pro audio exhibitors than ever before, and, arguably, more pro audio-oriented attendees, as well. It was the show that saw the return of Meyer Sound, joining major marques like JBL and EAW.
Convergence
What it's all about is convergence, the dynamic that's pulling live, installed and studio sound products and services into a common orbit, in conjunction with a continuing trend that's seen PA and other sound systems become smaller, more powerful, more portable and less costly, as well as progressively easier to use. The specialization of market sectors and knowledge is blurring, thanks largely to digital technology in general and, in particular, to larger convergences between AV and IT that's behind the proliferation of audio over digital networks and IP, and data-driven management of audio systems.
Winter NAMM, the larger of the two shows the National Association of Music Merchants holds every year, comes a week after the Consumer Electronics Show ends. CES is its own kind of circus and has become the focus of the $165 billion consumer electronics business, absorbing exhibitors and attendees from smaller shows over the years and providing a big tent for an ongoing convergence of sound, video and mobile devices and services. But that show might provide a template for the future of NAMM and other sector-specific trade shows as professional electronics systems undergo their own converging evolutionary paths.
The Audio Engineering Society's annual U.S. expos have been dwindling since the 2001 show was temporarily cancelled in the wake of the terror attack on New York, weeks before the show's scheduled date. That was unfortunate timing, but the AES non-academic constituency's buying power had been diminished over the previous decade by low-cost software-based audio recording and mixing systems that undermined the fundamental economics of recording music.
Not as Vulnerable
Despite the disappointing touring revenue numbers posted by Pollstar for 2010, which were discussed in this space last month, live sound can't be negatively affected by technology to the same extent recording studios and engineers were – the consoles go digital and the outboard morphs into plug-ins, but concerts still require moving a lot of air, and you need lots of power and transducers to do that. But everyone – from tour sound companies to artists to PA manufacturers – is looking for ways to economize and increase productivity. Consolidating the number of trade shows that have to be attended and exhibited at has become a leading tactic in achieving that for a lot of industries.
There are arguments pro and con for the possibility of melding NAMM and AES. The former include the savings in transportation of people and products to a lesser number of exhibition sites (and the lowered carbon footprint that comes with that), the increased synergies that live sound and other pro audio products can find under NAMM's bigger tent, and adding AES' forte – the education programs it's become so good at creating – would bolster NAMM's growing Hands-On Training (H.O.T. Zone) curriculum.
Being There
On the other hand, as any salesman will tell you, being there is everything, and the more "theres" you can show your wares at, the better. Furthermore, the NAMM show floor is already a cacophony of guitar amps, drum kits and DJ stations; one speaker maker at AES grumpily told me that AES has become too noisy to showcase anything close to nuance in a loudspeaker – NAMM could turn into an escalating firefight of level. (The show's regulations call for keeping booth noise under 78 dB, and more than a few iPhone with dB metering apps were pulled out by annoyed exhibitors when their neighbors' demos got noisy, but enforcement was spotty.) And some other shows, including PLASA, InfoComm and LDI, already provide showcases for live sound products.
Considering the changes that have overtaken the music business in the last 10 years (or the last 10 minutes – on the same day I write this Citibank now owns the Beatles' masters and EQ Magazine owns Mix), what might have been considered radical a decade ago is more than plausible now. The Tec Awards joining NAMM might be a red herring, but it might also suggest that a convergent future – one with implications for live sound – is at hand.
