If you ask any trance fan worth his or her salt, he or she will tell you that the heyday of trance was undoubtedly 1999/2000. Even though I only got into trance upon my return home in 2002, I can't help but agree. It's very difficult to explain to someone why we feel this way. I told my friends recently that I'd much rather go for a local trance consortium's event rather than see the renowned German remixers in town that same night because I felt that trance nowadays was rather anaemic (compared to the anthemic sound of 1999/2000).

Still, not having experienced trance at its peak firsthand, I've been very curious as to how others felt about it. It would appear that I'm not the only one. A young man has just started this up as a topic on the TranceAddict forum.

Some comments:

Music was't produced for ASOT [and] people didn't collect every track heard on
ASOT from P2P.

and

I think one of the keys things about back then was that it was more about fun, today just seems far too serious.

I, for one, know I am now so picky when it comes to nights out, and will berate DJs who play stuff I don't like, when back then, I'd just have fun with everyone else in the club.

Ignorance is bliss after all.

and finally,

Much less people had recordings of sets so they would have no idea that this DJ
overplays these tracks. This has been said before: DJ's dont play for people who
sit on the their computer tracklisting and collecting sets, they play for the
people in the clubs, and most of them don't have mix collections.

After all those arguments about the Internet forcing musicans to come up with good music because people wouldn't want to pay top dollar for an album with one good track and 14 crap ones, who would've thought that so many blame the Internet and the accessibility of live sets for download for the demise of quality trance?

Related links:
A Small History of Trance - written by a fervent TranceAddict in 2001
Ten Classic Tracks You Should Have In Your Collection