Ultra Music Festival has added 6 more incredible acts to their already astounding line-up for the first edition of Ultra Europe. The event takes place over the weekend of July 12th -14th in Split, on the beautiful island of Hvar in Croatia. The addition includes British electronic production duo—Chase & Status, the young and talented Swedish duo—Cazzette, and the Turkish progressive powerhouse named MTV’s “artist to watch in 2012”—Deniz Koyu. Furthermore, Space Ibiza resident, Yousef, and Swedish techno mainstay and founder of Drumcode Records, Adam Beyer will bring their contributions to the Carl Cox & Friends Arena over the first two days. Finally, Australia’s dynamic duo Nervo will be bringing the heat as they join the likes of Steve Aoki, and Dada Life for an awesome poolside party at the Hotel Amfora Grand Beach Resort which is destined to be an epic conclusion to the dreamlike weekend. If you absolutely cannot make it to the Dalmatian coast, don’t fret! You will still be able to experience all the action as UMF TV will be broadcasting live the entire weekend.

November 2007: Carl Cox Shooting

We kick-off this Compilation with an event that definitely wasn’t funny. It was very disturbing when people started shooting during Carl Cox’ gig in a Venezuelan club back in 2007.  The local Venezuelan news services later reported that the incident was gang-related, and that it had to do with rival drug-gangs clashing over the sales of ecstasy. 4 people lost their lives that night.

The following video contains violence and may not be suitable for all viewers.

March 2009: Steve Angello vs. Paris Hilton

Next up in this Compilation a classic Steve Angello move. It was back in 2009 when Steve Angello was doing a gig during WMC 2009 in Miami. Paris Hilton also made her appearance at the 1OAK party where Steve Angello headlined on that particular thursdaynight. From the start she showed not to fancy the music Steve played that night. She even said the music “was not even danceable and was frankly giving her migraine.” Eventually Paris asked one of her friends who runs the hotel to change the music and he said, “I’ll lead you up to the DJ booth and he’ll play whatever you want.” and that is what she did. (more…)

A lot of great dance music has been produced over the years. To ensure that these tracks will never be forgotten, we will post a once-thriving track every Thursday! We feel it’s a necessary refreshment of the past that will be sure to bring back memories. Hopefully it will give you the same awesome feelings that it had once given us. This week we have chosen: Hardwell & Chuckie’s ‘Guess What’!

Hardwell and Chuckie doesn’t need an introduction these days. Hardwell reached the number 6 spot in the DJ Mag Top 100 in 2012 and Chuckie fell down three places to number 35. These guys have been working very hard on their DJ careers, which resulted in Mainstage performances at the most amazing events in the world like Ultra Music Festival, Tomorrowland, Mysteryland etc. If we go back in time to 2007, we will notice a huge difference in the music they produce. Now it is all about the Big Room sound combined with the Dutch beats and basslines, but in 2007 Chuckie and Hardwell made a track that became the underground track of the year, maybe two years. It has been played everywhere! It was something completely new compared what we used to listen to. This was different, but it worked like hell! A fun fact, it has never been released on Beatport or any other kind of downloadportal as a single!

Hardwell: “I didn’t expect that someone was actually going to play this. For me it was a kind of DJ Tool to use in my set. Therefore I wanted to make the genre minimal more accessible, so people were going to understand the sound more.”

Hardwell: “The funny thing is that the track was never really finished. It has remained as a demo we had given to Benny Rodrigues who was quite surprised that I had made ​​such a track with Chuckie. He thought it was so great and he knew that a lot of techno and minimal DJs would also want to play it if our names weren’t on it. So Benny sent the track to everyone without saying who has made ​​it. When everyone was playing it and it became known that is was produced by Hardwell and Chuckie, the first reaction was: ‘What?! How can this be?! Within a week Erick E, Sidney Samson and Gregor Salto called because they had heard the track in a set of Benny Rodrigues. It is often the case that if you have  the ‘A-league’ supporting your track, the rest will follow. “

So here it is, something you might not expect from Chuckie and Hardwell, ‘Guess What’.

It seems Will.I.Am did more than just sample Arty and Mat Zo’s masterpiece called ‘Rebound’ on his latest track ‘Let’s Go’. William collaborated with Chris Brown on this track and, at first glance, it might surprise you how good this actually sounds. Unfortunately, when the melody kicks in it becomes clear how impudently Will.I.Am steals the creative work of Arty and Mat Zo. We expected so much better from Will.i.am, but it seems he is no better than Flo Rida.

Arty just tweeted that it all happened without a heads up to either him or Anjuna Beats, the record label that solely owns the rights for ‘Rebound’. They never cleared rights through Anjunabeats, which is the only label that owns the rights for “Rebound”.

There is basically one question left. Will.I.Am: Creative mind or a thief? Listen and decide for yourself!

Arty & Mat Zo – Rebound

will.i.am feat. Chris Brown - Let’s Go

Update:

Update 2:

Will.i.Am Breaks silence and talks on stealing Rebound for his latest collab featuring Chris Brown

“I got in touch with Arty and showed it to him, did a different version to it ’cause I asked him [to] make it newer ’cause I don’t just wanna take your song and rap over it. But in a year’s time, time’s gone by [and] we preferred writing over and using the [original] rebound. Something happened and the clearance … hopefully we resolved the issue. I’m a fan of Arty; I think he’s great and the world needs to know about how talented those guys are. It’s sad that it’s turned into a fiasco but hopefully it’s resolved because I’m a fan of those guys to the point where I wrote to their instrumental.”

Apollo, the track where Hardwell collaborated with Amba Shepherd is going very strong in Radio 92.3′s ‘Battle of the Beats’ where big tracks compete each other in a head-to-head race. Every week two tracks get picked to battle each other. The track that receives the most votes wins and goes on to the next round, where another big hit is waiting to kick their ass.

After winning 5 consecutive weeks,  beating Cazzette’s ‘Beam me Up’, Wil.I.Am ‘That Power’, Calvin Harris’ ‘I need your Love and David Guetta‘s ‘Play Hard’ it is now up to Alesso’s remix of Onerepublic’s ‘If I lose myself’ to step into the ring.

It goes without saying that both tracks are amazing, but who do you think is going to win this neck and neck race?

Hardwell & Amba Shepherd – Apollo

OneRepublic – If I Lose Myself (Alesso Remix)

UPDATE: Avicii premieres collaboration with ABBA at Eurovision Songfestival 2013 in Malmö.

The annual Eurovision Song Festival this year, which will take place in Malmö (Sweden), will feature a song composed by Avicii. This has been confirmed by executive producer Martin Osterdahl. The song is meant to be as a sort of anthem for the 2013 edition of this well known Song festival.

On this collaboration Tim Berg will work together with the male half of Swedish supergroup Abba, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. Abba sold over 370 million albums and singles worldwide and is therefore Sweden’s biggest music export to date.

‘We Write the Story’ will be performed live for the first time in the Final on the 18th of May.

SFX, the new owner of festival bigshot ID&T is going to storm the stock market. This idea was presented today by Duncan Stutterheim, the owner of ID&T. Next to that, some of the Dutch events will be laid off for unknown reasons. “It’s a risk we take. Maybe I will be looking back at this in 3 years and think, why did I do that?” That’s what the entrepreneur had to say about the decisions made.

Robert Sillerman, the big man behind the American entertainment giant SFX recently bought 75% of ID&T’s stock. The most important change for the Dutch part of the firm is that the amount of events will be significantly decreased. All smaller projects will be laid off as stated before. From now on ID&T will focus on the bigger international events. Duncan stated that America is a target market of 300 million people, and that’s why the focus needs to be there. Unfortunately this means that Festivals like ‘Energy‘ will not continue to exist. Even though ID&T will not be the actual owner anymore, they still claim to own the creative side of the company. This will be runned from Brooklyn, Amsterdam and possibly Asia. ID&T still decides what music will be played on the events, and that is what they were all about in the first place.

Interview Duncan Stutterheim in Dutch