A State of Trance

Scope

These unofficial guidelines cover the A State of Trance series of radio broadcasts.

This page is intended to be expressed in the same way as the official guidelines for Broadcast programs but with specific examples related to A State of Trance.

Guidelines

Release group type

The release group type should be set to "Broadcast" and "DJ-mix". If the show was recorded in front of a live audience, add "Live".

Release name

Follow this format: YYYY-MM-DD: A State of Trance #1234[, "Program Title"][: Location]

Only include Location if it is a live recording, or if the location of the recording changes often and is mentioned in the program or on the program's website. Don't add the location for most studio recordings. Location is of this syntax: [Venue, ]City, [State, ]Country

General Notes:

• Some episodes - especially those that are live yearly concerts - can be split into multiple parts, these are denoted like #500.5.
• The episode number may not be unique to the release group if the event has multiple stages.
• The Program Title should only be used for episode that have a known title such as "Top 20 of 2001" and not be used to annotate guest mixes "Airwave Guest Mix".
• Avoid using UTF-8 double quotes (angled) for the Program Title, use regular double quotes (").
• Do not include "XXL" in the Program Title as this is descriptive but not actually part of the title.

Examples:

• 2001-11-01: A State of Trance #20: Club Scanners, Dordrecht, The Netherlands
• 2001-12-27: A State of Trance #28, "Top 20 of 2001"
• 2002-07-11: A State of Trance #55, "Godskitchen": Club Code, Birmingham, West Midlands, England, United Kingdom
• 2011-04-16: A State of Trance #500.5, "Day 5: Sydney": Acer Arena, Sydney, Australia
• TODO: Add example of multistage.

Artist credit

The artist credit should always include Armin van Buuren, along with any artists that have provided guest mixes.

Examples:

• 2002-04-18: A State of Trance #44 – Armin van Buuren: A regular episode with no guest mixes.
• 2002-06-27: A State of Trance #53 – Armin van Buuren & Airwave: Includes a guest mix from Airwave.
• 2023-07-27: A State of Trance #1131 – Armin van Buuren, Ferry Corsten & John O’Callaghan: Includes two guest mixes from Ferry Corsten and John O’Callaghan respectively.

Track listings

Episodes can be distributed in a several forms, each version should be a different release within the release group.

Single MP3 (Bootleg)

In most cases this will be the full 2 hours, however, there are some cases where it may less or more (1 or 3 hours). It should contain a single track that is the same name as the release group:

• 2023-07-27: A State of Trance #1131 (1 track)

This is a Bootleg and should not contain a release event, label or catalog number.

Multiple MP3 Parts (Bootleg)

Some older episodes are split into the episode sections. Each track should have the title of the section.

• 2001-06-29: A State of Trance #5 (2 tracks)

This is a Bootleg and should not contain a release event, label or catalog number.

Split/Individual Tracks (Bootleg)

This is the original episode split into tracks:

• 2002-12-26: A State of Trance #78, "Top 20 of 2002" (22 tracks)

This is a Bootleg and should not contain a release event, label or catalog number.

Some tracks include an annotation like "Tune of the Week", "Future Favorite", "ASOT Classic", etc but these can be included in the track title but should not be included in the recording title.

Streaming Release (Official)

Episodes are now released on streaming platforms such as Spotify or Apple Music. These follow the standard guidelines for official releases.

Spotify has almost all episodes dating back to #0. However, it's worth noting that many episodes have a different track list because some tracks have been removed (perhaps because of licensing issues). Furthermore, the same recent release on Spotify vs Apple Music can also have very different track lists.

Label

Bootleg versions are easily available for download from many sources. However, they were never available for download through any official or label-endorsed website so they should not be attributed to any label.

Streaming releases are official and follow the standard guidelines for labels.

Release date

Bootleg versions were never officially endorsed or released by any label, so they should never contain a release date.

According to this official blog post the episodes were available on Spotify from 2012-09-09 which would be 2012-09-13: A State of Trance #578, "Universal Religion Chapter Six Release Special" and beyond (which is also the episode shown on the same page). So I'll focus on all the episodes up there.

Cover Art

There have been many fan-created artworks over the years. Some are included in the Bootleg releases. However, the Bootleg releases should never include artwork, even if the artwork was later present on streaming services.

Anti-patterns & Cleanup

Continuous Mixes

The previous version of this style guideline requests for the Single MP3 or Multiple MP3 Parts to use "Continuous Mix" in the title. These should be removed.

Guest Mixes in Titles

As mentioned above, any guest mixes are not part of the named title of the episode. The respective artists should be moved to the artist credits and removed from the title.

Other Notes

1. Spotify was the earliest streaming service to host episodes starting 2012-09-09. The first episode was 2012-09-13: A State of Trance #578, "Universal Religion Chapter Six Release Special". So no release dates can exist before this.
2. Streaming releases (older and newer) often have a totally different track list from the Bootleg version, and the releases can differ on each streaming platform. For example #1123 on Spotify is 43 tracks vs Apple Music is 28 tracks.

Links & Resources

1. Download episodes from trancepodcasts.com.
2. Find cue sheets (track lists with timings) from cuenation.com