Every couple of years I mange to make it out to the Winter Music Conference (WMC) in Miami, to enjoy life, listen to some good music, and make a few new friends. This time around I stayed at the Crest Hotel and Suites which was located off of James Avenue and Lincoln Road. The location of the hotel was fantastic in that a lot of parties and events during WMC take place between 1st street and 25th street, and as such are easily walk-able particularly in the mild Miami spring weather. The actual conference this year was held at the Eden Roc Hotel, which is a terrific venue, however it also is located on the 45th block which is a bit far from south beach. However, buses run regularly up and down Collins and a ride will set you back a meager two dollars each way. But I digress, other than the stellar location, the Crest Hotel had also very comfortable and clean rooms, and unlike a lot of the hotels in the south beach area, the walls were not paper thin so that one could enjoy a nice rest when needed. The front lobby was modern, clean, and the front porch area was large and enjoyable. The crest Hotel is a no thrills place, so don’t expect a fancy pool or a swanky bar, but at least it had free wifi which I find criminal when not provided by a hotel. The only hotel issue that I experiences was a 12 hour period without hot water, which was mildly annoying, but at least it was fixed within a reasonable amount of time. Given that the main purpose of a hotel is to provide a place to sleep and shower, I would have expected a little more than a $20 discount for the day without hot water. But that is something I will take up with the hotel corporate office – On that note, I really don’t get people that get all rude with the front desk because the discount was less than they expected. Hello, you are dealing with a person that has limited say in these decisions, spend your energy on dealing with the big cats at the corporate office, trust me, it will get you much farther on average.
On a related note, a couple of my good friends, Kelley and James, got a terrific hookup this year at the Ritz Carlton is south beach. I’m not sure exactly how they managed to pull this one off, but they landed a room on the members only floor with access to the members only lounge. The room was absolutely terrific with an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean, and nice little balcony, and of course the expected Ritz Carlton amenities. The members only lounge is also a terrific little place with unlimited access to complimentary appetizers and champagne during the day hours, and a varied selection of fine liquors at night. Needless to say we made good use of the lounge on a couple of occasions!
With the hotel stuff out of the way, here is a quick recap of the actual conference topics and panels. One of the most interesting sessions I found was the demo listening session where music industry big cats provided feedback on a 45 second sample of your song. Be prepared to get some honest critique without much sugar coating, which is a good thing - at least you will know what needs to change. My first track was very much disseminated by the panel, ok maybe it was not all that bad, but at least I got some valuable feedback. Another helpful panel was the one on licensing and copyrights. Particularly interesting were questions on using samples in your songs as related to licensing, clearing, and so on. These are things I know very little about, and are from a legal point of view extremely complicated in my opinion. I might need to pick up a book and do some reading now that I’m getting into producing tracks – but there were definitely some good tips here and there. Finally, another session that was a lot of fun was the scratch session which had representatives from the Miami Scratch Academy showing in detail how they perform some of the tricks they do. The session was very interactive and I took some video at the end when the decks were open for people to show off their skills. I’ll post this video in a view days after I do a little bit of editing on it. Overall I thought the panels were actually quite good and informative and I feel I got my money’s worth for purchasing the badge. Now here is one thing that WMC gets right that most other conferences don’t: none of the sessions started before 10am. The worst are engineering conference, were breakfast is served at 7am and the talks start at 8 am. Then come web / interactive conferences which are a bit better and tend to start at 9am. Seemingly only the people behind WMC understand that when you go to a conference, you are also going to explore the city and have some fun in the evenings – hopefully some of the other conferences can learn from this.
That’s all for the first part. In the second part I will cover all the parties I attended, the clubs / venues that were cool as well as those that were a complete waste of time, and some of the new DJs that I discovered on the way. Hopefully by then I will have all the pictures posted from the trip as well, so stay tuned.
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