Winter Music Conference

History and background

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, has hosted up to an estimated 100,000 people. The first Winter Music Conference took place at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott during 19–21 February 1986. There were approximately 80 dance music industry insiders in attendance. Since its inception in 1986, the event festivities have moved down south, across Miami Beach and Downtown Miami. A major event during WMC is the International Dance Music Awards (IDMAs). 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.

The WMC & The Recording Academy began in 1996 - a partnership presenting The Producers Forum, a gathering of legendary artists. In 1999, Ultra Beach Music Festival, now known as Ultra Music Festival, became an event as part of Winter Music Conference, taking place on 13 March 1999. Waxpoetics Magazine, JBL, and Stanton sponsored the first International Record Collectors Show in 2007. The WMC 2009 introduced the first annual WMC VJ Challenge at The Miami Beach Resort & Spa with celebrity hosts, judges, and VJs from various parts of the world hosted by VJ Psyberpxie and Felix Sama. This inaugural year of the competition resulted in Sergey Lobodln (Moscow, Russia), walking away with the top winner prize. In 2010, the VJ Challenge was expanded into two areas of competition; Video Mixing and Audio/Visual Mixing. The 2010 VJ Challenge winners were AeonChild (Boulder, Colorado) in the video category and Eclectic Method (London/NYC) in the Audio/Visual category. The Miami Beach Resort also received the performance of the RoboMusic Demo in which Funkstar De Luxe and RoboProfessor (Henrik Hautop Lund) create live interactive compositions of RoboMusic.

Since 2008, the conference has received increasing competition from the International Music Summit taking place in Ibiza in May.

In 2011, for the first time, Winter Music Conference and Ultra Music Festival split and took place during two completely separate weekends in March. This was "a gross inconsideration by the WMC for event planners worldwide and artist scheduling." according to Windish Agency booking agent Steve Goodgold. 2014 was the last year that Winter Music Conference lasted a total of ten days. In 2015, WMC took place across the span of five days. Following that, 2016 was the second time that Winter Music Conference took place apart from Ultra Music Festival, lasting only four days, 21–24 March. Since then, other music conferences have come about including SXSW in Austin, Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE), and EDMbiz in Las Vegas, which takes place during Electric Daisy Carnival yearly.

Demographics

The WMC is recognized for serving around 60,000 visitors during one week. In 2008, 3,726 industry delegates attended, 65% of the present were males and 35% were females. Most of the delegates hailed from the United States summing up to 62%, 23% came from Europe, the Latin American community formed 4% of the delegates, Canada with 6% and 1% of Asia and other territories.

At the events and panels, 15% of the professionals in 2008 were record label representatives, publishers, and A&R. The press and media formed 13% close to the 12% of music production specialists, 10% were DJs, 8% being artists as well. Event and concert promoters, managers, agents, and consultants added up to 13% of the present. Radio, venue, club, an bar representatives each listed 5% of the visitors. More than 1.3 million people from 183 countries (out of 192 in the world) viewed the WMC website in 2008. 62,000 participants from 70 countries were present at Miami Beach to get involved in the WMC week.

Events

There are over 500 individual events during the week the conference takes place. In 2007, The New York Times named it "one of the most anticipated clubbing events in the country."