Regarded as one of the biggest events on the dance music calendar, Miami’s Winter Music Conference annually brings in a horde of DJs and music industry players for a week of late nights and of course the massive Ultra Music Festival to showcase the biggest and brightest in the field.

But things have hit an unfortunate speed bump for the next year’s festivities with WMC officials yesterday announcing that the conference would move its kick-off up two weeks early to March 8th-12th, causing something of a ball ache for attendees heading along for Ultra and a slew of already booked parties which will hold the old spot in the last week of the month.

The date-change drama has been the talk of the DJ community since the announcement, with many high flyers expressing their frustration at the date change and protesting that they won’t attend the conference.

“People I won’t be in Miami 8th – 12th,” Steve Angello wrote on Twitter. “I’m having my Size part[y] the last week of march… And most of the people I know will be there…3.500 people attend the conference, 400.000 people attend the party’s .. Why move the dates and confuse people ?? [sic]”

For Kaskade’s money the switch signals the death of WMC with the house don saying “WMC – R.I.P. It was a good run, we will miss ya’! Now we can start calling it what it really is, Spring Break.”

According to Data Transmission the reason behind the date switch stems from WMC organisers being unable to reserve a host hotel for the last week of March, as most had already been booked out by DJs and party promoters.