It is no secret that trance experienced a decline in the volume of quality releases some time after 2005. In the late 2000s, the genre was more like a shadow of its former commercially successful period (~1999-2002) and its brief Internet revival (2004).
I think most can agree that something must have happened in the late 2000s for this decline to happen, but I realized that there rarely is any mention as to what actually happened. After thinking about it for a while, here are the hypotheses I could come up with:
I think most can agree that something must have happened in the late 2000s for this decline to happen, but I realized that there rarely is any mention as to what actually happened. After thinking about it for a while, here are the hypotheses I could come up with:
- Other genres (like electro-house) rose in popularity, displacing trance as the go-to music in clubs and drawing in young talent.
- The young producers who entered trance during this time lacked talent. After all, they're the ones who made this happen. Their productions decreased the overall quality of the genre.
- The recession happened, and trance was just a poor fit for the post-recession world. When everyone wanted grittier, harder music, trance was left out of the question.
- Also, many good producers might have needed to quit producing trance to earn a living
- The easier access to DAWs and digital labels made producing and distributing mediocre tracks easier
- In theory, this would have happened to every genre and does not really explain why there are so few good tracks post-2005 versus pre-2005.
- (Occam's Razor) By this time audiences were already exhausted of trance, so they flocked to other genres