It’s official, there is a serious feud between WMC – Winter Music Conference and UMF – Ultra Music Festival organizers. Earlier today, I got super excited when the official dates for WMC 2011 were finally posted. My joy quickly turned to a big exclamation mark when I saw the dates Mar 8 – 12, but I took it for what it was. Throughout the day, I just thought it was way too odd why the dates changed from the usual schedule of last week of March. I decided to search around on the internet as to why the sudden change after 25 yrs of tradition. I soon found out I was in for a surprise. Not only have the dates for WMC changed, Ultra and WMF are feuding. Ultra will remain March 25 – 27. So we have a feud, now 2 events in the same month and these 2 events are two damn weeks apart. Attendees have been pretty much left out in the dust to figure things out.

All I could think of in my head was, am I glad I didn’t book anything yet. A 25 year tradition which people from all over the world have been used to just screwed us all over without warning. So many people anticipated things will be the same, that they had already made all their bookings and reservations even before the dates were announced. I decided to do more sniffing around to find out WTF is really going on here. I was able to find this official statement from WMC:

At 12:57am today, Winter Music Conference’s founding Director’s received an email from Ultra Music Festival notifying them that the 2011 Ultra Music Festival would not be presented during and in conjunction with the 2011 Winter Music Conference. The notification was served despite a signed October 15, 2009 contract between the two entities which stated that the 2011 Ultra Music Festival would be presented during the five-day period in February, March or April 2011 designated and promoted by WMC as the ‘WMC week’. WMC organizers say “We were blindsided by Ultra’s last minute announcement this morning.”

Since the news broke out, everyone has been jumping in to give their piece of how they feel about the entire situation. Owner of Space Nightclub in downtown Miami, Mikey, shared his thoughts also:

With WMC comes WMC Drama, the two just seem to go hand in hand. This year the big D is all about the two different Dates (WMC and Ultra) which are confusing the fcuk out of everyone and raising all sorts of questions… What is up with the 2 dates? What is really happening? What is the inside scoop? What is Club Space doing? When should we come to Miami?
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This year and once again, Ultra is trying to monopolize WMC by engaging exclusive contracts with all major DJs which will not allow them to perform at your favorite dance clubs. Last year they got Tiesto, Deadmaus, Guetta, Carl Cox, Armin…) to sign Ultra exclusives and this year they are going after everyone else.
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WMC used to be about free parties with DJs and industry folks sharing and enjoying new music. Now, it is about greed and money with Ultra and all the clubs fighting over talent, hotels charging 4 times what they are used to and agents and DJs banking on the demand

You can also get snapshots of what various Artists and DJ’s such as Swedish House Mafia and Tiesto are saying at Miami NewTimes. Even MTV news has also picked up on the story. This must be really confusing to everyone and I am in the same boat right now. I really want to go to WMC, but Mar 8 – 12 does seem a little too early and the weather is still a little cooler then too. In the meantime chime in, which event will you be attending?

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