So when the official Miami site announced yesterday that the conference itself would be taking place from March 8th, a mini-firestorm set the web alight, with people like Steve Angello getting his g-string in a right twist and Tiesto calling some Donnie Brasco-a-like contacts in Florida to find out what's what.
Apparently (and unbelievably) the Winter Music Conference organisers couldn't get a host hotel for the last week of March, as most are already booked out to party organisers. Hence, the earlier dates.
Steve Angello started a twitter rebellion to keep the party dates the same as always, during which he also seemingly reveals that it is WMC who organise Christmas each year. So much for pagan tradition! ;-)
Then this morning to further confuse matters (or make them clearer), Ultra Music Festival announced that's its traditional festival at the end of WMC week would be going ahead in line with the usual dates, that is at the end of March and not on the new earlier schedule. UMF will now be on 3 days across 25th to 27th March.
In line with the man like Angello, numerous promoters have already booked parties and DJs for the last week of March, so at the moment the situation seems like this:
If you want all the pool parties, big names, big brands, UMF, muscle beach dancing type action, then it's likely to still be happening at the end of March, starting with an Air London party on Tuesday 22nd March at the Electric Pickle. If you want to go the actual conference itself, then that will run from 8-12th March. At the moment it's unclear as to the exact party schedule.
Here's what happened last year as well as a rather extravagant trailer to announce this year's Ultra Music Festival dates.