Dance Music News 2004 - Highlights

UK Festival Awards 2004: From folk to floods, chavs to hippies, innovating to organising, chillers to pillers, anthems to tantrums, reunions to confusion, Beatles to bottles - 17,000 festival fans have cast the first ever true reflection on what really matters in the world of live outdoor music. The results can now be revealed.

The first ever Trance Awards 2004 have been created to give the global trance community their say on who has been cutting it in 2004.

A public vote held at tranceawards.com from the 14th December to the 31st January 2005 determined who walked away with the awards. The special Award Ceremony

Radio 1 asked it's listeners to vote for their House Rules club of the year. They voted in their thousands and Circus took the number one spot as the House Rules Club of the year 2004.

Circus is only two years old, it's renowned for it's diverse and quality line ups and welcoming party atmosphere

John Peel has died suddenly on holiday in Peru. Recently made an OBE, the legendary Radio 1 and Radio 4 presenter, has suffered a confirmed heart attack last night (25th Oct) - he leaves behind his wife Sheila and four children. The veteran broadcaster had worked for Radio

The results are in, and 2004's Top 100 DJs Poll has been by far the biggest ever. All records have been smashed with 91,481 of you casting your votes - that's nearly 30,000 more votes than last year!

For interviews with all 100 DJs, full statistics on continental voting patterns and more, look out for the special souvenir edition of DJ Mag (no78/vol3), in shops

The MOBO Awards 2004 was held on Thursday 30th September 2004 at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Below we have a brief insight in to the MOBO Awards and a full list of 2004 winners... A number of factors have contributed to the radical mainstream acceptance of

Absolut Tracks launches October 7th European producers spin the Absolut brand’s creative work into music

Spain’s Wally Lopez, Russia’s DJ Vadim, Germany’s Monica Kruse and Poland’s Jacek Sienkiewicz - are continuing the introduction of musical interpretations of the

The UMA awards are one of the only credible music award ceremonies in the world. This year we have also added 7 categories by our inclusion of the urban music awards within the UMA’s. The UMA awards are in recognition of the various artists / DJs / musicians / labels / club nights that make up the vibrant underground,

Junior Jack, Martin Solveig, Shapeshifters, Blaze, Roger Sanchez, Erick Morillo and Nic Fanciulli are amongst the list of Nominees for the 1st ever global House Music Awards 2004 - as announced this weekend on the Essential Selection on Radio 1. Other Nominees include: Joey

Spring last year saw the publication of the first edition of The Unsigned Guide, the only music industry directory compiled specifically for unsigned and emerging bands, musicians and their managers. With the support of Musician’s Union, Cultural Industries Development Services, England’s North West Regional Development Agency

To coincide with her Frantic Euphoria release (currently no.4 in the album compilation chart), Queen Of Clubs Anne Savage takes over ‘cyber world’ with the official website launch www.AnneSavage.net. It is a place for all ‘Annthusiasts’ to visit and THE official site to surf. The site

Clubland legends Miss Moneypenny’s launch new record label, Miss Moneypenny’s Records.

Focusing on quality funky house music, the label will be an opportunity to release the wide range of funky house music that Miss Moneypenny’s have loyally delivered to their dancefloors over the last 10 years. The first

Yep, believe it or not Clubbing UK have been approached for their, um, well profess-er-nal opinion on the state of the world's on-line clubbing!!! An M8 Magazine Feature special...

Our very own Editor in Chief / Office Monkey Owen 'Puff Puff, Give Give' Daniel gets quoted left right and centre,

The service long-awaited by iPod owners has been launched. For many iPod owners, the brilliance of the music machine has been offset by the amount of time needed to download their music collection onto it. It is believed that many of the iPods given at Christmas are still in their boxes as initially thrilled recipients struggled to find the 40 hours or so required to download an a

The Show, aka Steve Mac and Mutiny boys Rob Davey and Dylan Barnes, are looking for a singer to record a track on their album in progress, due to be released on Mac's label Variation later this year. "The Party", the first track recorded for the album and set for released on 15 March, is already a big player with the likes of Pete

The nominations for DanceStar USA 2004 are listed below. The DanceStar nominations are formed by The Dance Music Academy. All participants are based in the US and work in the dance music industry. No Academy member can select nominees they represent.

DanceStar USA takes place on Tuesday March 9 in Miami. The event is filmed for worldwide television syndication.

As of January 2004 Slinky has left its Bristol home of almost 3 years - Creation. Presumably this came as something as a surprise, as Slinky had recently issued new DJ line-ups for February in the Bristol venue?

"Creation has been taken from receivership and now has new owners, these owners are looking to implement new policies within the venue and as a result the current manage-

The government are just embarking on a pr campaign drawing (excuse the pun), peoples attention that Cannabis will be reclassified from a Class B to a Class C drug from Thursday (January 29) but still remains an illegal substance.

The decision to reclassify cannabis followed the advice of the national Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, a

Supported by some of the biggest names in dance music, 2003s inaugural World DJ Fund global fundraiser achieved phenomenal success. A staggering £260,000 has been raised to date, to support the work of the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy organization.

Miss Moneypenny’s New Home - the Birmingham based nightclub operator and dance music record label run by the Ryan brothers have acquired their former home, the nightclub "Bonds" in a £1.5 million pound acquisition.

The new venue renamed "HQ" will become the first in a series of five "Lounge Culture" bar/nightclub/live music

The country's leading music training organisation, Access to Music (ATM), is bringing it's unique brand of contemporary music training to local musicians this September with the launch of an exciting new course entitled Creating Music Through Technology (CMTT).

Founded in 1992, Access to Music is a national music training organisation specialising in the design of vocational

Grape Records Update - with various artists and a mixed volume Grape have been producing some fine naturally sparkling house music all summer long! Fresh, funky house at it’s best!

Here at the start of November the third Grape release is now well out, the classically beautiful Motown-esque "You

back up massive