Ultra Special Feature: All You Need To Know About Miami Music Week; Producer & DJ Special

March is a busy month for electronic music in the United States of America. Specifically in Miami, Florida, where the prestigious Miami Music Week is held in the last week of March every year. For those that don’t know, Miami Music Week or MMW, encapsulates everything related to electronic music and, in a broader sense, everything related to DJ-ing, with 2 major events being the larger-than-life Ultra Music Festival, and the uber-cool Winter Music Conference.

For years, the Ultra Music Festival would be the nightcap on Miami’s Winter Music Conference. In 2011, a scheduling dispute caused by a situation where the Winter Music Conference and the Ultra Music Festival took place independent of each other. Ultra ended up using the term “Miami Music Week” to describe the EDM-centric events going down in Miami at that time. Word is that attendance at the 2011 WMC did take a hit, and since then, Ultra and the Winter Music Conference now take place during the same week. That’s how the term Miami Music Week came into existence.

Bill Kelly, One of the founders of WMC

It was founded in 1985 by then DJs and record pool directors Louis Possenti and Bill Kelly. Held annually in Miami Beach, Florida, the Winter Music Conference, or “WMC” as followers of electronic dance music call it, hosts around 100,000 people. The first Winter Music Conference took place at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott February 19-21, 1986 with approximately 80 dance music industry insiders in attendance. The event festivities are presented across Miami Beach and Downtown Miami. A major event is the International Dance Music Awards. The event commands a major international draw with around 38% of attendees coming from outside the United States.The conference serves as a platform for many underground and indie artists from over 70 different countries who spend the conference at events and panels; it is also a medium used by several entrepreneurs and consumer electronic companies to present their businesses and technological developments.

There are a ton of events that form part of the WMC roster. Namely:

• WMC Seminars & Panels
• Ultra Music Festival
• The International Record Collectors Show (since 2007)
• South Beach Sessions (since 2008)
• International Dance Music Awards (IDMA)
• The Producers Forum (since 1996)
• WMC Demo Listening Workshops
• WMC/DMC DJ Spin-off
• WMC On-Site Featured Events
• WMC Exhibits
• WMC Official and Sanctioned Events
• WMC Sample Sack
• The Guide
• The List
• Exhibit Hall
• WMC technology demonstrations
• WMC VJ Challenge (since 2009)

Ultra is held in Downtown Miami in Bayfront Park. It was a one-day festival initially organised by Russel Faibisch and Alex Omes, from 1999 to 2006, a two-day festival from 2007 to 2010, and was a three-day festival in 2011 to 2012. Reportedly it got it’s name after one of its founders, Russell Faibisch, attended a Depeche Mode concert at the Miami Arena, and realised that he wanted to work with electronic music all his life. The name was derived from Depeche Mode’s 1997 album “Ultra”.

While the main UMF takes place during Miami Music Week, since 2007 Ultra has expanded to Ibiza, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Santiago, Split/Hvar, Johannesburg/Cape Town, Bogotá, and Tokyo.

The Miami Music Week consists of a ton of events and parties that occur in and around Miami, apart from the two humongous ones named earlier. It serves as a perfect chance for Record Labels and upcoming DJs to showcase their talents as a big turn out is guaranteed on account of the huge numbers in attendance at Ultra & WMC.

So far there have been 282 parties scheduled for the Miami Music Week. Click here for a list of all of them.

It is but a dream for DJs and producers to be featured at any one of these parties, and to be featured at one of the stages at Ultra is an opportunity beyond their wildest imagination. Many DJs and producers who have already built a strong reputation for themselves firmly believe that getting a spot on the Ultra roster means establishing their careers in the United States, and thereby making themselves known to the more mainstream audience pool.

The festival helped acts like Tiësto, Avicii, and Deadmau5 launch their careers in the United States. By 2006, with EDM virtually nonexistent on U.S. radio, playing Ultra, one the few major American electronic music festivals, seemed necessary to gain exposure. Established artists began seeing Ultra as a key place to premiere new tracks. Newcomers saw it as a way to get noticed.

“I’ve probably done 11 out of the 15 years of Ultra,” superstar DJ Tiësto confesses. “It’s probably one of the most important festivals in the world. To be a headliner there, on the main stage, with the big production, has been very good for my career.”

The Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello trio Swedish House Mafia, first made their premier at Ultra in 2010. Since then, they’ve had much more mainstream success than any of them did in their individual careers. Their final show as a trio at Ultra 2013, saw an unprecedented viewership on the Ultra live stream (One of the highest views at the festival) as well as a huge number of people in attendance.

A lot of industry insiders, like promoters and music journalists, are of the view that it is Ultra that made EDM what it is today. They firmly believe that EDM wouldn’t be where it is today without the Festival.

In 2013 alone, the Ultra weekend boasted of 330,000 attendees. This combined with Dance Music enthusiasts who attend WMC make up for a colossal number. It’s easy to see why being noticed during the prestigious Music Week makes all the difference to a DJ/Producer’s career.

One of the biggest examples at how Ultra aids in pushing your career can be seen by glancing at dubstep/brostep producer Skrillex’s career graph. If you track Skrillex from 2010, who played a side stage, to 2012, when he headlined a main stage, you can see it year to year. An artist on a side stage this year could probably headline the festival next year.

Hence for a producer to get noticed at Ultra, it could be a life changing opportunity. Obviously being offered a slot is a long way off for many producers, but a more realistic way of riding the Ultra wave is if an artist includes a producers track in his/her Ultra set.

A prime example of this could be Hardwell including his Revealed team-mates Dannic’s and Dyro’s tracks in his sets. Now both Dyro and Dannic hold comparatively prestigious posts on the DJ Mag top 100 list in terms of newcomers. (Dyro was the highest ranked newcomer at #30)

There are a ton of other examples we could give you, but that would make this article too long to go through. The basic point we’re trying to make is getting noticed at the Miami Music Conference could be the only thing stopping you from making it onto Forbes Highest Paid DJs list and being a well respected and much sought after name in the Electronic Music world.