Ultra Music Festival: Wrap Up of 17th Successful Year
Sunday, March 29th marked the end of Ultra Music Festival with a record breaking wrap-up of one of the world's premier music festivals. As the memories of Ultra 2015 settle in and hashtags of #Ultra2015 and #UMF continuously clutter your social media feeds, preparation for Ultra 2016 has already begun. The announced dates for next year's festival are March 18, 19, and 20th of 2016.
Even with an 18+ age limit introduced by event organizers, the event brought in even more talents and diverse attendees, than ever before. With varying genres that were tailored to appeal to the widest variety of dance music tastes, some incredible talents were also brought upon as surprise guests to Ultra 2015. With collaborations with Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Usher, Diddy, and O.T. Genesis, the performers kept feeding the audience with creative new collaborations. Continuously, record numbers of viewers were diligently watching the livestream, as the record-breaking number of attunes danced along to the outstanding music performances experienced during Ultra. Bayfront Park welcomed nearly 92 different nation's very own to attend the music festival, swarming the park and all of it's eight staged with flags from every corner of the globe.
The livestream for 2015 was produced by UMF TV, streaming exclusively on Twitch.tv and powered by 7-UP to help bring 12.5 million viewers into the experience of Ultra. The dedicated viewers from over 192 countries worldwide of 2015, broke Ultra 2014's record of about 11 million viewers. With overwhelming support online, Ultra was also in the spotlight on Facebook and Twitter for the entire weekend as artists such as Skrillex, Avicii, Axwell^Ingrosso and Martin Garrix landing in the Top 10 worldwide trending items during their performances. Dedicated attendees fed the internet with photos, videos, and links to anything pertaining to the experience inside the fence of Bayfront Park for that weekend.
With impressive performances and stage set-ups every year, this year, Ultra Music Festival truly blew all of the attendees expectations out of the water. Designed and created by UMF's creative director, Richard Milstein, and featuring the mapping design of V Squared Lab's Vello Virkhaus, the main stage reveled at Ultra 2015 was a renowned success. With impressive LED paneled screens and the sound system practically shaking the people in the crowd, the festival had once again outdone itself with it's always advancing, and innovative light and sound system. Despite the pouring rain on Friday evening, not only did the set-up withstand the sufficient dampening, but the crowd never stopped celebrating Ultra's 17th year.
Not only were surprises brought about with the main stage, but the Resistance Stage, powered by Arcadia Spectacular also was a huge success even as a first year stage. With talented tech-house sets from Maceo Plex, Tale of Us, Dixon, Jamie Jones, Art Department, and many more, the set-up of a 360-degree stage proved once again Ultra's dedication to providing the best and most immersive, state of the art production, for it's thousands of fans.
As a traditional favorite, Carl Cox, brought upon a huge success at the Megastructure with the Carl Cox and Friends show for it's 11th year. Joined by Loco Dice, Seth Troxler, and MK to name a few, Cox brought upon an unbelievable show Friday and Saturday night, handing off the Megastructure stage to Armin van Buuren for his "Together In A State Of Trance" show. Sunday, with the help of Armin van Buuren, artists such as Eric Prydz, Paul Van Dyk, Andrew Bayer, and Markus Schulz closed up the last day of the Megastructure stage with an intricate yet invigorating blend of trance music. Quite nearby, the Live Stage also hosted diverse and creative artists such as Kiesza, Clean Bandit, Porter Robinson, Krewella, Kygo, and many more.
With so many security changes this year regarding the age limit and the overall safety of the park facilities and it's security staff, Ultra 2015 was a great success. With the lowest number of arrests since 2012, the City of Miami Police Department, along with Event Security did an outstanding job of allowing everyone to conduct a fun and safe weekend in the beautiful city of Miami.
AUTHOR CREDIT: ALEXANDRA SHAFRAN