To be absolutely honest with you, I think this is pretty much pointless. Even if a lot of people sign this petition I don't think much is going to change, if you ask me.
What I've been noticing as of late is that Armin has pretty much become a mainstream Techno DJ judging by his most recent sets where half of the music played there is Melodic Techno and the other one is Big Room Techno (or Mainstream Techno, if you want), there's barely any actual Trance there, in fact, even in his radioshow this music shift has become highly noticeable which at least has one thing positive: Upboring is finally dying, yay!
But, in any case, I personally think the genre is going to die out massively and become a rather niche underground thing the minute Armin retires because, let's face it, how many big names popular and powerful enough to carry the Trance torch have appeared in the last ten to fifteen years of the genre? Very little to none at all, let's face it: The vast majority of the Trance producers who are still more or less considered influential enough in the Trance scene these days have been pretty much the same people who were considered quite influential ten to fifteen years ago. Armin, Ferry, PvD, Markus Schulz, A&F, Cosmic Gate, Giuseppe Ottaviani, and that's pretty much it. As of now, the mainstream Trance scene has been failing miserably to create a proper new generation of Trance producers who could genuinely carry the torch for the genre long after Armin retires which also proves another point: That the whole idea that Trance Music remained a force to reckon to the point of being the indisputable king of the EDM world for pretty much the late 90's and the entire 2000's decade is actually a more fragile concept that many of us will probably be willing to admit, I mean, let's face it, if Trance really ever was at the top of the EDM scene it was probably only between 1998 and 2002 and that's pretty much it. The world had pretty much moved on since then, the only reason Trance didn't fully die out to become another niche underground thing it was originally because of Tiësto and later because of Armin because if it weren't for these two guys Trance, more especifically Epic Trance, would have probably just be remembered as a thing of its time and that's it, the same way Pizzicato Prog was a thing from '95-'97, Dream Trance was a thing also from '95 to '97 and that Oldschool German Hard Trance sound was also a thing from '93 to '97, more or less, interestingly enough all these very short-lived subgenres ended up disappearing more or less at the same time Epic Trance was finally getting big which was in '98, so hadn't it been for Tiësto and later Armin the history of Trance has as a mainstream-attractive genre would have probably ended more or less in 2002-2003 which would have probably had been for the best, in my very honest opinion.
