Miami, Florida is known as one of the dance music capitals of the world. Ultra Music Festival is one of the most recognizable electronic music festivals in the world and it, along with Winter Music Conference, helped cement the Magic City as the place for EDM. Since the EDM boom, Miami has gained a slew of new festivals that touch on all areas of the scene. While Ultra was the first domino to fall during the COVID shutdown, Miami’s own III Points was the first major festival back since 2019.
III Points has a very different focus than festivals like Miami, but it takes extra care to cater to the Miami local scene. It doesn’t aim to be ostentatious, but it features an eclectic lineup of underground acts in electronic music and other genres. The festival has had its own troubles over the years, being forced to reschedule in 2018 due to the Zika scare. This time the COVID shutdown caused III Points to reschedule three times before it finally found its sweet spot in late October 2021.
Since the last time III Points was held, it gained a major new benefactor in the form of Insomniac. Insomniac now owns most of Link Miami Rebels, the group that puts on III Points. Insomniac took the COVID period to grow its underground music brand with festivals like Secret Project, so III Points fits right in with this new image. The backing of Insomniac (and thereby Live Nation) meant that III Points took it to another level in 2021. It came in with a solid lineup featuring names like Eric Prydz, ZHU, RUFUS DU SOL, Maceo Plex, Patrick Topping, and Michael Bibi, but it also stepped up the production in many ways.
There were some initial hiccups on night one because a sea of people arrived all at once, causing some chaos at the entrance line. Then there was a torrential downpour for about an hour on Friday that certainly thinned out the crowd a little bit. There was also a little audio problem with Michael Bibi on Saturday night, but all in all it was a great event. The festival was packed with people and packed with stages. There were something like 7 stages scattered around different areas of Mana and RC Cola Plant in Wynwood. The festival really leaned into the industrial local Wynwood flavor of the event.
Better yet, the festival was complemented by Link Miami Rebels’ other well-known property, Club Space. There were afterparties Thursday through Sunday night featuring Eric Prydz, Cristoph, Maceo Plex, Michael Bibi, and Rufus Du Sol (DJ Set). This is what the corporate giants like Live Nation call synergy, but it really does work in this case.
Being the first true electronic music festival back meant that everybody in Miami came out of the woodwork to attend. You can see how III Points is really growing into its own in Miami. It shows it has staying power and has found a nice niche in the scene. While Rolling Loud was technically the first music festival to return to Miami since COVID, III Points gave Miami the proper reintroduction to electronic music festivals that were so badly needed.