Florida Governor Ron Desantis declared a state of emergency on Monday.
Miami's annual Winter Music Conference has been canceled due to concerns over the spreading coronavirus, organizers announced Monday (March 9), following Florida Governor Ron Desantis' state of emergency declaration earlier in the day. WMC had been scheduled for March 16-19.
The announcement follows last week's news that Miami’s popular Ultra Music Festival was officially canceled, also due to the coronavirus.
Launched in 1985, WMC is a music conference held every March in Miami and is part of the larger event known as Miami Music Week, a 10-year-old week-long marathon of dance music concerts and parties. Drawing an estimated 100,000 attendees and 3,500 music professionals from more than 70 countries at its height, WMC hosts a schedule of events, parties, seminars and workshops and serves as one of the largest industry networking events in the dance/electronic music genre. Though the Ultra Music Festival was originally spawned by the conference, it eventually surpassed it in terms of influence, and its parent company went on to acquire WMC in 2018.