Alive Coverage

Ultra Miami Smashes Expectations at Miami Music Week

Miami Music Week draws over a thousand artists and hundreds of thousands of music fans and onlookers from around the world every year to the beachfront city, but the biggest name by far is Ultra. Ultra Miami is a legendary event, the home base of the now global event that performs for over a million people a year in cities like Tokyo, Bali, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, and Cape Town. However, it all got started right here in Miami, and the home crowd energy is palpable at this incredible event.  

The Ultra Party

Ultra Music Festival is a three-day event, featuring the biggest and baddest names in the business today. For 2023, the event took place on March 24-26, at the 32-acre Bayfront Park in Miami, just feet from the beautiful Atlantic Ocean. Tickets start at about $300 for the three-day pass, but demand is extremely high and prices rise quickly, so get yours early if you’re planning on attending next year.  

Ultra has it all – the hottest artists and biggest names, 150 artists, and six different stages to choose from. Because Ultra is the biggest name in the EDM festival business, there’s no shortage of vendors, food and drinks, and merchandise to keep you entertained. Of course, the beautiful people of Miami at Ultra are legendary, and you’re guaranteed to experience the party of a lifetime. 

EDM Superstars at Ultra

Ever since its inception, Ultra has proven to be an extremely popular festival, capable of attracting the best and most desirable talent and artists out there. Its enormous size, with around 165,000 people attending, enables them to bring the best artists you could want to see onto its stages. That’s why Ultra is the #1 choice for those looking for the ultimate authentic EDM festival experience. 

People from 100 different countries came to Miami this year, proving the global reach and enormous capability to attract talent that Ultra displays every year. Some of the best artists that performed this year were:

• Martin Garrix
• Zedd
• Afrojack
• Marshmello
• Tiësto
• Armin Van Buuren
• Swedish House Mafia
• David Guetta
• M.I.A
• Testpilot (AKA Deadmau5)

It’s easy to see just from this preliminary lineup why Ultra is such a legendary festival. Artists like Tiësto and Deadmau5 (who performs under an alias these days, Testpilot) are considered the godfathers of the EDM scene, and without them, it would all look very different than it does today.

In fact, Testpilot and HI-LO, who performed together, dropped a remix of Tiësto’s classic “Adagio for Strings”, one of the most legendary techno songs ever. These artists have together created a legacy in EDM music that will reach down through the years and last as long as computers are being used to make music. 

Artists like Marshmello, with over 14 billion views of his videos online, are modern-day legends in the scene. You can definitely see the parallels between Deadmau5’s large mouse head outfit and the conspicuous marshmallow suit headgear that he wears, and the parallels in their music can be seen as well, though Marshmello brings a little more ear candy and fluff to his mixes.

David Guetta is another superstar DJ and producer with many billions of plays, Armin Van Buuren is one of the most recognizable names in the scene, and M.I.A.’s ubiquitous hit “Paper Planes” still elicits a sing-along reaction from the crowd every time. Superstars like Afrojack and Swedish House Mafia round out the event with world-famous hits and bass drops that just can’t be found anywhere else.

For the $300 starting ticket price, the value here is just unbeatable. Nowhere else will you be able to see this many big names performing together at once. Ultra makes the ticket price well worth it and still affordable for anyone. 

 The Underground Festival of the Masses

For EDM artists, it’s hard to be considered a true superstar until you’ve been invited to play on Ultra’s stages. In the EDM scene, there’s a dichotomy between the “main stagers” and those who drift over to the smaller, more eclectic side stages. Of course, the party is the biggest at the main stages, but sometimes you’ll find your new favorite artist over at the smaller sets.

This dichotomy encapsulates the Ultra experience quite well. Since its beginning in 1999, Ultra has gone from the most legendary, authentic of underground scenes to the largest music festival worldwide. Almost everyone has heard of Ultra, and it’s hard to call yourself a true EDM fan if you haven’t been at least once.

This mass, worldwide exposure has done wonders for the scene, bringing it legitimacy and perks like more food vendors, classier performances, and more up-to-date security, but some EDM fans long for the simpler times, when hardly anyone had even heard of “EDM”, and the scene was populated only by hardcore ravers who would crisscross the country in search of the latest underground record being spun.

However, like all scenes that explode in popularity, this is just part of the lifecycle of the scene. Greater exposure to the masses means that Ultra is here to stay, and the experience becomes more accessible to all. While some of the old heads might bemoan this, at the end of the day it’s better for us all and the music scene in general.  

Mass exposure is necessary to sustain the life of music, and with record sales stifled by internet streaming and people downloading without paying, the artists rely more and more on this type of massive festival that can draw in big crowds and hand out the correspondingly big paychecks. Without major festivals like Ultra, Coachella, and Electric Daisy Carnival, the EDM music scene would be nowhere near as successful as it is today.

So, if you’re looking to experience this wonderland for yourself, it’s a necessary experience for any EDM fan and truly a festival that you won’t regret going to. The atmosphere at Ultra is electric and super-charged, with a crowd size and amenities like no other. Get your tickets as quickly as possible, because they go quickly!