Image via Complex Original
This weekend, Miami will be rocked to its EDM core via the 16th edition of the Ultra Music Festival, which is truly an institution in the American EDM scene. Big names like Tiesto credit headlining the Ultra Music Festival with truly helping establish their careers in America, and scores of EDM fans make their trek out to Miami for Miami Music Week just to hit the Ultra Music Festival. And while many will know who is spinning before lineups are announced, 16 years of history is a lot, and we imagine there are things you might not know about the Ultra Music Festival, from the lawsuit that could've disrupted it's growth or what the majority of crime during their 15th anniversary entailed. DAD's here to give you some education on the Ultra Music Festival, with 10 things you didn't know.
Depeche Mode helped inspire the Ultra Music Festival
Russell Faibisch (one of Ultra's organizers) told the Miami New Times that "It was Depeche Mode in [1993] for the 'Devotion Tour' at the Miami Arena that everything clicked for me and I realized that this was what I want my life to be. Somehow, someway, but I hadn't figured exactly how yet." The name of the festival came from the album title of Depeche Mode's 1997 album Ultra.
The Ultra Music Festival didn't turn into a multi-day event until 2007
With 50,000 attendees in 2007, Ultra did not look back, and booked two-day events going forward. Their 2011 festival was the first three-day event, with the 15th anniversary in 2013 book-ending that year's Winter Music Conference.
The 2008 Ultra Music Festival broke the record in the City of Miami for tickets sold for a single event.
Gives new meaning to deadmau5's "Event Driven Marketing" acronym for EDM. Speaking of deadmau5...
The Swedish House Mafia played their first live performance at Ultra Music Festival in 2010
It was only fitting that their last performances as a group were at the 15th Ultra Music Festival in 2013.
Ultra Records and the Ultra Music Festival announced a "global alliance" in 2012
Ultra Records actually first filed suit in 2003 over Ultra's use of, well, "Ultra," but it's said that they settled later that year. A dispute was reignited in 2010 after Ultra Records said Ultra violated their terms, due to Ultra expanding outside of Miami.
A rift between Ultra and the Winter Music Conference helepd coin the phrase "Miami Music Week"
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.
Ultra helps bring in approximately $80 million annually to the city of Miami
So no matter how much of a dust the locals wanted to kick up before the 2013 festival, it's hard to deny that cash windfall coming in from one annual event.
The Ultra Music Festival has expanded into a worldwide phenomenon
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 2013 Ultra Music Festival clocked in 10 million unique streaming viewers
No doubt one of the main reasons why Hardwell broke Twitter during his set.
The majority of the 2013 Ultra Music Festival-related crime was due to gatecrashers
With ticket prices soaring to $400 and more, it's no surprise that the majority of people committing crimes are those who were looking to hop fences or push their way into Bayfront Park without paying. That's also a total reversal of what you normally hear about with EDM-related crime in the news media, which is usually tailored to the amount of drugs used or overdoses piling up.