Music Makers Mix, Remix in South Beach

March 27 -- MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — They've remixed everything from Elton John to the Backstreet Boys to Sarah McLachlan to Britney Spears. For the DJs and tech wizards who star at the industry's annual dance music orgy here (a k a The Winter Music Conference), it rarely matters where a song comes from — only where they can take it.

"A good song is a good song. You can't get away from that," says Orlando Puerta, director of street and lifestyle marketing for Warner Bros. Records. Puerta was among the roughly 30,000 industry taste makers, radio programmers, DJs, exhibitors, agents, and club enthusiasts to storm the Beach for an endless round of club shows, parties, and panels over the last five days.

"It extends the life of a song, and it opens new doors," Puerta says of this subindustry, which has always been important but has exploded over the last three years. With the old-fashioned singles market changing drastically, it's not unusual to see maxi-singles with seven or more mixes of the same Top 40 hit.

Combine that with the untold numbers of bootleg mixes, and songs now last in rotation months longer than they would have years ago. For Toni Braxton, her willowy 1996 ballad "Un-break My Heart" was a solid hit — then became enormous when the dance remix took it over the top, extending its radio life through the '90s. Deborah Cox's "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here," and countless other hits, have enjoyed similar runs as strong traditional singles and 4 a.m. club favorites.

The process has also long worked in the reverse direction, taking obscure singers from clubs to stardom, and even resurrecting big names like Cher, who might never have made it back to mainstream radio had the culture of dance mavens and club queens not supported her.

"What it does is it opens people up to music that they might not have known about or even thought about," Puerta says. "Things we never thought we'd hear in clubs — Sarah McLachlan is a perfect example — songs from Nashville, we now hear in remixes."