Posts Tagged ‘video’

Deadmau5 rages on Ultra Music Festival

Whether you are a fan of the artist or not, you gotta respect the fact that the guy always speaks up his mind. It may piss off a lot of people but with his status as one of the biggest EDM producer, he now has the possibility to do it and not compromised his career, not even one bit, it actually may make him bigger and reinforce his iconic image.

It seems the video link is dead – YouTube must have blocked it..

Basically Deadmau5 is telling his fans he is probably not playing the Ultra Music Festival this year (understand he is definitely not playing it), followed by an argumentative explanations on what he thinks of UMF and this type of festival in general. Here is a summary of his points:

1. Tickets are too expensive: He feels that this is not right for the fans, as the tix are too expensive. He feels that its better for fans to go see their favorite acts for less, than pay so much for so many acts – basically replacing quantity with quality.
2. Stage production is limited: He cannot provides his fans with the real Deadmau5 experience due to the other acts playing the same day which means he cannot have his custom made stage, which is a huge part of his shows.
3. Exclusivity: UMF is notorious for getting exclusivity on artists for the WMC time slot (march each year). This way artists can only play at UMF during the conference/festival period, which reduces their pay check, and also lowered the idea of a conference and moved all the attention to the festival, and it seems he hates that.

People are probably going to think; “Deadmau5 is a whinny spoiled artist, who found a way of complaining about a festival that has been paying him hundreds of thousand of $$ to play a pre-recorded set“. From my point of view, he is taking a good step towards the music rather than a paycheck. Sure he doesn’t need the money now so it’s easy for him to do it – for example last year he probably thought the same thing but still took a paycheck – but i like the fact this time, he saying no, and he explains to the fans why. I agree with 2 of his points; tickets are very expensive and the exclusivity is ridiculous. Djs used to love WMC because it was like a yearly reunion where they would all gather at the same place and party. And the headliners of the UMF used to be the same as what you could find at a club on a Tuesday night. Now perhaps we are moving towards this due to the growth of EDM, same way rockstar moved from smaller venues to stadiums and open air festival.

I might be utopic but I would love to see other headliners doing the same thing (although Deadmau5 is the only one with such a specific stage production) but at least I would love them to secure 1 week during their year full of gigs to step away from the show business and just think music and give back to the fans.

Would love to hear what you guys think?!