Playing a Jam Session with Students from Samford University at the Ayers Guitars Booth at the NAMM Show
Author: Jed Kim | Major: Data Science, Business Data Analytics Concentration | Semester: Spring 2025
Greetings, my name is Jed Kim. Although I am a Data Science major with a concentration in Business Data Analytics, I decided in the spring of my junior year that I wanted to work as a data scientist in the music industry to combine two of my life’s passions: music and statistics. To pursue this path, I conducted my honors thesis research on COVID-19’s impact on the guitar retailing industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the most catalyzing events of the 21st century, leading to supply chain disruptions, lifestyle changes, and a massive shift towards digital technologies. In the guitar industry, it created both an unexpected surge in demand due to lockdowns and a decrease in production due to social distancing in factories and supply chain disruptions.
As a data scientist and guitar player, I wanted to quantify some of these changes and explore the future of the guitar market. I first contacted Dr. Jake Hertzog, the Jazz Area Coordinator from the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, who helped me narrow my focus to changes to guitar retailing after COVID-19. He also encouraged me to apply for the Lamond GenNext Award (NAMM) and the Honors College Travel Grant so that I could visit the NAMM Show, one of the largest music trade conventions in the world, as it would provide me with an excellent view of the music industry at a glance and help me expand my musical network. With the preparations complete, I knew that Dr. EmmaLe Davis from the Information Systems department of the Walton College of Business would be a perfect faculty mentor. Since I had taken two of her classes before, I knew that she specializes in business intelligence and visualization and would be able to provide a good general business standpoint.
After Dr. Davis agreed to help with my research, I started drafting my research proposal in summer 2024. By the fall semester, I had devised 3 broad research questions: did the guitar retail market behave significantly differently from the clothing retail market, did it change over the course of the pandemic, and how is it predicted to grow in the next 5 years? Dr. Davis helped me set goals and deadlines for myself, and after finding an online dataset, I thought I was ready to begin. However, after purchasing the data, I found that it was completely unusable, as it only included industry-wide numbers. I needed to find somewhere else to procure guitar sales data on the individual transaction level. After contacting a few major guitar retailers and local stores, I learned that very few guitar businesses were willing to provide this type of data. At this point, the summer and most of the fall semester were over, and I still had no data. Determined to make my project work, I contacted 105 new guitar stores across the nation through email and web forms. Within a few weeks, I managed to find 2 stores that were willing to help, and by December I had access to a quality dataset. By the time my analysis began in earnest, it was already time to fly to California for the NAMM Show.
I am extremely thankful to the Honors College and the NAMM foundation for providing the opportunity to attend the NAMM show, and I am also grateful to Dr. Hertzog for initially proposing the idea. As he had said, attending the NAMM show exposed me to the music industry all in one place, and greatly expanded my professional and musical perspectives. At the NAMM show, I conducted interviews with industry experts, who all touched on the greater trend of online sales and media, as well as an explosion of interest in digital products throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. I visited booths and tested products from dozens different brands and makers, including both brands that I had never heard of and brands I was very familiar with. Additionally, I had the opportunity to meet other young musicians/music professionals and hear words of wisdom from music legends, such as five-time Grammy winners Victor Wooten and Jacob Collier. At the NAMM show, I saw clearly that my love of music is shared by many incredible people around the world, and even in my professional career, I can share that love in many ways, including through data science. The CEO of NAMM, John Mlynczak, encouraged every student attending the show through the Lamond GenNext scholarship (which I received) to “find their superpower and use it.” For me, I believe that “superpower” is to use my passion for music to tell the story of the data in the music industry.
After returning from the NAMM Show, I was able to conduct a few more interviews with regional experts and finally finish my research. In the end, I found that the COVID-19 pandemic radically changed the guitar retail market, with demand initially skyrocketing, supply shrinking, and eventually, demand falling back to the normal level. The Honors College research grant allowed me to travel to the NAMM show – an experience that changed my life and greatly improved my research – and I am very thankful to them and everyone else who supported me. Going forward, I will continue to follow my passions to hopefully find a data science job in the music industry. Wherever I end up working, I plan to continue learning about the music industry, keep working hard, and most importantly, spread my love of music and learning to wherever I can.