CRONOMI IS NO LONGER

[dj Inada]

We sadly announce that CRONOMI IS NO LONGER: the label stops all its activities for good.
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First, we would like to thank everyone who has supported us over the years! Many of you bought our releases blindly: many considered us a 'boutique' label with far out the best psychedelic dance music: that makes us proud! 🥳🤩
You, our fans, made it possible for us - the label and its wonderful artists involved - to bring out the best psychedelic dance music. For that we are very grateful!!! 😘 🤗
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There are many reasons why Cronomi stops all its activities. Mainly it is due to the many negative changes in the goascene over the years.
To sum up a few:
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(1) The goa scene has shrunk a lot, so sales went down. 〽️
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(2) Many people prefer to stream music for free or at low budget (online): we can not compete with multinationals like youtube or spotify, who by the way don't share any of their profits with us - the revenue is very very small. Maybe it makes you more "visible", but sales never follow. With visibility you can't pay the bills
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(3) People seem to prefer to spent their money on parties and festivals, but not on the creative input that makes the goa scene move forward - labels and artists are forgotten and it seems that the overall so called PLUR experience of the party or festivals goes before that of the support for the music that makes out the core of the scene. 🥸
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(4) Power and political games in the goa scene: many line ups are dominated by the same people over and over. Small and lesser known artists hardly get a fair chance. The time that good music promoted itself is gone. Cronomi is a label, nor a booking agency, nor a party organization and certainly not a hollow online promo machine. 🤑🤖
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Conclusion: we can no longer afford to invest our own savings into the label with so little return. We hardly turn break even.
It is sad that sales went down so much, because everything we released received much positive attention and good reviews. Music works therapeutic and still many people seem not to care enough to invest in it.
That is a paradox with low selling rates: music helps us heal, but those who make the music receive hardly any support. A sad truth...
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The Cronomi stock will stay available for a while, BUT not for always. So if you want to still grab your copy, be fast! At a certain point all of the remaining stock will be destroyed.
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Thanks again to all our loyal fans - we will NEVER forget the appreciation you gave us 🥰
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Warm regards 🙏

 

 

[Kitrinos]

Understandable.

Talk about the same boring lineups with the same well-known names over and over again! Not to mention the very high ticket prices for the festivals.They are not affordable for many of us. It's kind of sad that many people who go to festivals have deep enough pockets to pay for travelling costs, festival tickets etc., but not for an album. You're probably right that most of the new audience don't really care about buying the music or at least getting acquainted with relevant discography. They just want to go to festivals, even if they don't know who's playing. I feel the scene is becoming more commercialised, like the rest of Psytrance. Fast food for the masses.

Not sure though whether the Goa scene itself has shrunk. It seems it's becoming more mainstream. The underground feeling is fading away, and instead you get big expensive festivals with extravagant, flashy decoration, and very prominent, levelled up DJ decks, as if they are some kind of superstars. They look ridiculous, egotistic attention-seekers to me. When the scene emerged in Goa in its most authentic form it was not like this; the dancing experience itself was the focus.

There are more events and music released than 15 years ago. It's just that there is no "quality control" anymore. As physical format is gradually being abandoned, individuals and labels can publish virtually anything online, which is not costly I suppose and therefore not risky. And then you end up with tons of music released, most of which is of poor quality, and most of which almost nobody buys.

 

[Kitrinos]

I just don't understand why you plan to destroy any remaining stock after some point, it makes no sense. It seems a disservice to the purpose you've served all these years and disrespectful to the artists. 

[acid being]

This is sad news but also not too surprising in today's world. For me personally, I have been enjoying Goa trance since the late 90s but I had to drastically cut back my music purchases in recent years due to financial pressures which I am sure is the same for countless others (and no I don't go to festivals either). I think I had bought only 2 or 3 psy albums in the past 8 years.

My rationale was that if and when my financial situation improved I would reward all my favorite artists at that point, but I see now, for some it is too late. However on a slightly happier note I have just bought Artha's 2 albums, M-Run - Some Run Just For Fun and Flumina - Globox. All digital download though as most of my CDs just end up wrecked these days.

Thanks for all the great music and best wishes.

[Oopie]

It's a decision that's understandable in the current world. Not that many Goa labels out there anymore, innit? Or even labels that release CD for that matter. There's a slight renaissance for vinyl which on the other hand is positive news, if you're into that. I still like to play CDs though... no need to have computer/app open is such a relief. 

[dj Inada]

On 12/7/2025 at 4:19 PM, Kitrinos said:

I just don't understand why you plan to destroy any remaining stock after some point, it makes no sense. It seems a disservice to the purpose you've served all these years and disrespectful to the artists. 

I think it is disrespectful from the goa scene public not supporting artists by streaming all their music for free or on platforms that don't pay them
I refuse to still participate in this charade and changed priorities, to do what feels authentic - the choice has been made ❤️ 

[Dolmot]

I don't really feel like getting into the pissing contest about how people (or kids these days) are listening to wrong music and listening to music wrong, but we can check some trends for sort of hard facts. One go-to place is IFPI's global music report. Right now the main site is acting up, but you can get a referring article or the pdf.

 

For some possible key points:

• Music revenues as a whole crashed by about 50% from the late 90s peak (or "peak CD, no Napster yet") to the 2015-ish "how should we even get stuff" confusion low, but now they've actually made a new all-time high again.
• Nowadays the big money comes from streaming (51.2% subscriptions, 17.7% ad-supported, 69.0% together), but obviously not for everyone equally.
• Physical media is 16.4% globally, probably less in the US and similar countries. (You can find US stats separately.)
• Vinyl has outsold CDs since 2020.

I still buy CDs and vinyl - for reliable hard copies and simply for collecting, but overall CD buyers are a small minority and people actually listening to CDs even smaller. That "I don't even own a CD player" boast was popular already 20 years ago. Today I know people who actually hoard CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives because their production is dwindling and eventually you won't be able to get any new ones even if you wanted.

 

Anyway, streaming is how people get music. It's another story how "kids these days" listen to music. I'm not saying that everyone only checks six second video snippets, but I do think that swiping, skipping, shorter attention span and instant gratification are real trends. I'm obviously old and grumpy, but in my opinion psy-trance in general got a bit weird already in the 00s when it still insisted on 8 minute tracks, yet placed some crowd-hyping filter effect or fill in there every 20 seconds. It was different in the 90s when listening involved the effort of loading a physical disc, and a few minutes of gradual building was a thing, acceptable, or even expected.

 

I don't know if I'm getting anywhere here but let's just say that goa, CDs, and goa CDs are on the losing side of major trends. Also, there is so much of everything that marginal stuff is ridiculously marginal now. I'm almost literally drowning in music and I'm buying it on physical discs. If I tried to follow even a fraction of all the digital stuff, RIP me. It takes me more than a month to process what I can easily get on a single Bandcamp Friday.

 

I'll stop here because it's late again, but maybe I'll dedicate another message to Cronomi. Let's see. 

[Prana4ever]

Let's be honest, Goa Trance truly emerged around 1993-94 and started dying in 2000, that's about 6 or 7 years of peak popularity.
Then it came back around 2006-07, and now we are in 2025, that's almost 20 years of what we used to call new school Goa. Do you think Goa Trance evolved much in that time? After so long it's not surprising to see it decline, it's a natural phenomenon. 

Listen to a random Goa Trance album from 2023 and tell me how different it is from a 2013 album...

[dj Inada]

4 hours ago, Prana4ever said:

Let's be honest, Goa Trance truly emerged around 1993-94 and started dying in 2000, that's about 6 or 7 years of peak popularity.
Then it came back around 2006-07, and now we are in 2025, that's almost 20 years of what we used to call new school Goa. Do you think Goa Trance evolved much in that time? After so long it's not surprising to see it decline, it's a natural phenomenon. 

Listen to a random Goa Trance album from 2023 and tell me how different it is from a 2013 album...

 

14 hours ago, Dolmot said:

I don't really feel like getting into the pissing contest about how people (or kids these days) are listening to wrong music and listening to music wrong, but we can check some trends for sort of hard facts. One go-to place is IFPI's global music report. Right now the main site is acting up, but you can get a referring article or the pdf.

 

For some possible key points:

• Music revenues as a whole crashed by about 50% from the late 90s peak (or "peak CD, no Napster yet") to the 2015-ish "how should we even get stuff" confusion low, but now they've actually made a new all-time high again.
• Nowadays the big money comes from streaming (51.2% subscriptions, 17.7% ad-supported, 69.0% together), but obviously not for everyone equally.
• Physical media is 16.4% globally, probably less in the US and similar countries. (You can find US stats separately.)
• Vinyl has outsold CDs since 2020.

I still buy CDs and vinyl - for reliable hard copies and simply for collecting, but overall CD buyers are a small minority and people actually listening to CDs even smaller. That "I don't even own a CD player" boast was popular already 20 years ago. Today I know people who actually hoard CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives because their production is dwindling and eventually you won't be able to get any new ones even if you wanted.

 

Anyway, streaming is how people get music. It's another story how "kids these days" listen to music. I'm not saying that everyone only checks six second video snippets, but I do think that swiping, skipping, shorter attention span and instant gratification are real trends. I'm obviously old and grumpy, but in my opinion psy-trance in general got a bit weird already in the 00s when it still insisted on 8 minute tracks, yet placed some crowd-hyping filter effect or fill in there every 20 seconds. It was different in the 90s when listening involved the effort of loading a physical disc, and a few minutes of gradual building was a thing, acceptable, or even expected.

 

I don't know if I'm getting anywhere here but let's just say that goa, CDs, and goa CDs are on the losing side of major trends. Also, there is so much of everything that marginal stuff is ridiculously marginal now. I'm almost literally drowning in music and I'm buying it on physical discs. If I tried to follow even a fraction of all the digital stuff, RIP me. It takes me more than a month to process what I can easily get on a single Bandcamp Friday.

 

I'll stop here because it's late again, but maybe I'll dedicate another message to Cronomi. Let's see. 

 

You both reacted spot on... thanks for understanding.
The world changes for good or bad, and we must in time adapt our priorities to not get burn out or a bore out: repeating to make the impossible happen is a silly thing and creates suffering.