The festival season is fast approaching and you know what that means – time to live stream the biggest festivals in the world!
In case you didn’t know, the season will officially kicked off starting with Ultra Music Festival (UMF), one of the biggest events on the North American EDM circuit.
Held in Downtown Miami in Bayfront Park, UMF is an annual outdoor electronic music festival that occurs in March. It’s said to be one of the biggest dance events of the year because it coincides with the annual Winter Music Conference, also held in Miami. In the past, UMF has featured acts like Afrojack, David Guetta, deadmau5, Kaskade, and Tiesto, to say the least.
From 1999 – 2006, UMF was a one-day festival but from 2007 – 2010, it became a 2-day festival and then a 3-day festival from 2011 – 2012. In 2013, for the first time in festival history, UMF took place across two consecutive weekends. The 2013 edition of UMF sold out its pre-sale tickets within seconds of the launch and saw an attendance of 330,000 partygoers.
In 2014, the festival returned to a one-weekend format and needless to say, it continued to bring thousands of dance music fans to beautiful Miami for the festival.
Ultra’s “UMF TV” has proven one of the best festival streams in the business, covering both weekends of Ultra with plenty of amazing and high quality live set coverage from the world’s biggest DJs. UMF would also usually take the liberty to save DJ sets individually and post them up on their YouTube channel for those who miss the livestream.
Last year it was streamed live on YouTube, but today Ultra is announcing Twitch as its exclusive broadcast partner. The move highlights the growing competition between the 2 video platforms, which Twitch played up in its statement:
Ultra’s decision to switch over to our platform validates Twitch as a legitimate force in the music space.
Twitch was acquired by Amazon back in August 2014 for USD970 million dollars and dominates the live streaming market for gaming. But over the last 2 years, it has moved aggressively into live music, hosting a number of prominent electronic artistes and launching a new broadcast category for performers.
Last month Skrillex and Diplo uses BeatPort’s Twitch channel to unveil their Jack U project, a live stream that peaked at more than 20,000 concurrent viewers. Mind boggling!
While we hang on the edge of our seats for more UMF x Twitch live stream details, check out all the other festivals in the world which have got free livestreaming, right here!
Psst. Let’s not forget that Ultra is making its way to Bali this year. Deets here 
Source: The Verge.