The reason I think a lot of trance sounds a bit stale and samey, is that a lot of the time, it's DJ's making the progression from DJing to producing. People just want to make music now, so as a result they take whatever shortcuts they can. how often do you see unanswered posts on trance forums by people asking for tips on 'how to make a big lead' or 'how to make an A&B bassline'. They use presets as opposed to learning how to program the synth and stick to tried and tested riffs and patterns. They, and I partly speak for myself, just want to make music that sounds good when you're off your tits on drugs, which doesn't take that much originality. I too am guilty of this - but I do have some programming knowledge and try to make all my patches myself.
The fact is, there is so much to learn, that people tend to stick to tried and tested whilst they find their feet, finishing the first track is always a milestone, and people take whatever shortcuts they can to achieve it - The people who really make the effort to build their own sound will succeed, and there will be hundreds of bedroom DJs/producers who won't go the extra yard to make their stuff sound unique and instead swamp the file-sharing community with their remixes of peak time anthems.
I agree that something original is more likely to get signed - A lot of the time though, people just want to make music that sounds good, it doesn't have to be original - if it did, no one would be listening to trance anymore, yet it's the most popular genre.
