Toronto based electronic progressive house producer Joel Zimmerman, better known as his air-conditioned mouse-helmet donning stage persona Deadmau5, has recently expressed distaste with Ultra Music Festival– particularly the high price of tickets, and the exclusivity contract artists must comply with, according to Miami New Times Blog.

photo by Pamela Lin

The video rant has since been taken down, however Miami Times pulled this quote about his frustration with the exclusivity contracts:

“When they used to do it during the conference, it was awesome. But then there was some bullshit going down too. I’m not gonna say anything about anyone. But say you are a headliner DJ dude, Ultra will pay you X amount of dollars to be exclusive to Ultra, which I guess is alright if you are an A-liner … [Winter Music Conference] used to be the Christmas for the fucking DJ, because you go to Miami for a week and play up to eight gigs that fucking week, easily.”

As well as this quote about the promoting nightmare of putting several of the world’s hottest EDM superstars at one festival:

“It’s like that for all major North American festivals … Even if you don’t want to, you are competing against the festival programmer, you are competing against the other acts, you are competing against the time slots.”