The Spectre of Post-Genre?: The Ongoing Value of Popular Music Genre Among Multi-Age Musicians

There has been a great deal of recent writing in both academia and the media on the demise of the popular music genre. Certain commentators argue that the idea of musical genre can be both ideologically and stylistically narrow and repressive for musicians, and that the far broader musical palette offered by new technologies such as DAWs and streaming leads to almost

limitless stylistic possibilities. This, it is argued, leads many young musicians and producers to identify, and be identified, as 'post-genre' (James, 2017, Carvalho, 2019, Brassier, 2007, Petrusich, 2021, Katz, 2004). I, however, propose a thesis which offers a different and more novel model that explores the ongoing value of genre by looking at the virtually unexplored

forces that influence the creative processes of multi-age musicians and producers (Bennett, 2023).