WMC 2008 Stepping Past the Glamour and Glitz

The Miami Winter Music conference cruises down Collins Ave into South Beach this March 25-29 for year 23 of the infamous event. Last year in & around 40,000 music enthusiasts & industry peeps (70% US folk & 20% Europeans) attended the festival in some shape or form, with almost 1800 artists & DJs playing at the enormous list of events taking place around South Beach. Many of the people flocking to the event are there purely to check out the club gigs by night and roast by day at pool parties rather than attending the actually conference itself. In a way you could say that over the years, the overbearing presence of big club shows & superstar DJs, press reviews and images of sun, glamour & sexy people, and copious “Miami Compilations” has somewhat shadowed the original essence of the festival which was about creating an annual worldwide dance music industry networking & review where people involved with all areas of the scene from all parts of the globe could meet up a share their new music, skills, visions & advice. WMC was the first of its kind and was the one time when you were likely to get almost all of the world’s top acts & labels in the same spot together for 5 days. The case is still somewhat true today in that you’ll nearly every big name in dance music in town for the event, more so than any other similar festival. Nonetheless, many say that the quality and appeal of the WMC has been dipping over the years with other similar events around the world fast catching up, if not already over-taking, like ADE, Midem, Sonar, London Calling & South by SouthWest, some offering more sophisticated, innovative & specialised showcases. That said, looking a the actual conference agenda for WMC this year, the schedule still looks pretty healthy & exciting with quite an in depth selection of discussions & work shops covering almost every angle of the music world over the course of the 5 days. There are seminars on the history & development of electronic music and the advancement of music technology & music marketing; workshops & classes on everything from remixing & editing, creating podcasts, web & RSS management, to event promoting and handling the specifics & legalities within the label business, and of course there’s a good old giant record fair. Many of these seminars & workshops are hosted by world renowned artists, record labels & music industry heads and are generally fully attended and enthusiastically reviewed. So it seems, glamour & glitz aside, there’s life left in the original roots of the WMC yet. You can the full story on the real WMC on their website www.wintermusicconference.com