The International Dance Music Awards (IDMA) and Winter Music Conference.

With so many music related events being cancelled this year it’s not surprising that the 34th IDMA scheduled for March was cancelled and replaced with a virtual ceremony on 1st April 2020. The event takes place every year with 110 nominations in 26 categories this years winners included Carl Cox, Charlotte De Witte and Armin Van Buuren.

The International Dance Music Awards have been held annually since 1985 in Miami Beach, Florida, United States as a major part of the Winter Music Conference. And since 2017 has been owned and run by Miami Music Week, the organisers of Ultra Music Festival.

The IDMA purports to be a very official sounding collective of major players within the electronic music community, including notable artists, managers, agents, publicists, and promoters, among others. The organisers use the Viberate metrics-based platform to populate the IDMA Artist Categories and present a set of nominees based on true artist popularity and free from industry favouritism and politics, apparently.

The annual IDMA are part of the larger Miami Music Week and Winter Music Conference. The conference is aimed at industry professionals like producers, artists, promotors and record label representatives. The conference holds a series of seminars, working group panels, workshops and a plethora of networking events and parties. In addition, there is usually an exhibition hall featuring a stage with education sessions, product demos and performances.

The conference is very business like and is well worth attending for anyone working in the live music events business with a focus on the dance music scene. At the same time as the conference is a three day event called Ultra Music Festival and although this is loosely related to the conference it’s really part of the wider Miami Music Week. The IDMA is probably the highlight of the Winter Music Conference with a lavish awards ceremony taking place towards the end of the week.

Even if an artist or business fits one of the 26 categories they cannot nominate themselves as this is done by the organisers of IDMA and is therefore restricted to the most well known popular artists and prominent industry figures and businesses. However, it is probably still worth considering attending the Winter Music Conference and IDMA ceremony just for the experience. The Miami Music Week provides more than enough to keep any party animal satisfied and can be combined with some serious business with networking opportunities at the numerous parties and live music events that run concurrently. The prices vary between $280 for standard registration and go up to $650 for the Pro registration that enables access to "WMC Sanctioned Events," and the chance to participate in "Mentor Sessions" with industry professionals and "established artists."

If you are an events organiser responsible for managing live music events there is an events  software management solution that can help make the planning and running of music events more efficient. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The FestivalPro platform is easy to use and has all the features and functionality a live music event organiser needs to plan and control their event.

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