Number of attendees at Ultra Music Festival in the U.S. 2012-2018

Annual outdoor event, Ultra Music Festival (UMF), attracted over 165 thousand people to its 2018 edition in Miami, Florida. Despite the year marking the 20th anniversary of the electronic dance music (EDM) festival, the rate of attendance has remained stable over the past four years. The figure reached its peak in 2013 with 330 attendees. In that year, the festival took place on two consecutive weekends to celebrate its 15th anniversary, which explains the increased number of participants.

The top three EDM “festival heroes”

The festival covers a variety of EDM subgenres, ranging from techno, trap and deep house to drum & bass. Among the headliners for the 2018 Ultra Music Festival edition were famous DJ’s such as Armin van Buuren, Tiësto and David Guetta. For Dutch trance DJ Armin van Burren, UMF was only one of 26 festivals he performed at in 2018. Belgian techno DJ Amelie Lens only played one more festival set in that year. However, the two are surpassed by Russian “techno goddess” Nina Kraviz, who dominated the festival ambit in 2018 – performing at a total of 35 festivals.

Music genre preferences among U.S. consumers

In a 2018 survey conducted by online streaming service Deezer, 20.6 percent of respondents stated that they had a preference for electronic dance music. The most popular music genre among Americans, however, is rock music with 56.8 percent of respondents saying they were currently listening to this genre.