Rock's on a roll

As viewers of Top Of The Pops well know, loud guitars, big hair and rock 'n' roll attitude have been making a comeback. But now it's official - rock bands have toppled pop acts from the top of the sales charts.

Rock outfits including Evanescence, The White Stripes and Radiohead have also dominated the charts this year.

That doesn't mean pop is dead - stars such as Robbie Williams, Westlife and Blue still sell millions. But a new generation of pop acts, including Avril Lavigne, Busted and Pink, have realised that guitars and attitude are the way to the top of the charts.

New figures show rock outsold pop for the first time last year, becoming the leading genre in the UK. The likes of Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Oasis accounted for 31 per cent of the album market compared to 30 per cent for pop. R&B artists like Beyoncé and Sean Paul may be the stars of daytime radio, but they come a long way behind with seven per cent of sales. Dance music accounts for 9.5 per cent, while rap sells five per cent - largely thanks to huge international artists such as Eminem and Jay-Z.

But it is not just new artists like The Darkness, Coldplay and The Coral who are leading the rock revival. Sales of back catalogue albums from acts such as The Rolling Stones, Nirvana and U2 also helped guitar bands establish their dominance.

A spokesman for HMV said: "You only have to look at the success of Pop Idol and boy bands like Blue to realise that pop still lies at the heart of the charts, but it has taken a distinctly rockier edge over the last 18 months or so."

But while Coldplay's Chris Martin and Mick Jagger may sell hundreds of thousands of CDs, the industry as a whole has suffered heavily from the spread of internet piracy. The sales bible of the music industry, The Recording Industry in Numbers, warned singles sales have fallen to a 10-year low, down from 80.1 million in 1999 to 52.5 million last year.

The report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents record companies worldwide, says: "Illegal downloading was directly responsible for the drop in singles sales." Album sales went up, however, from 176.9 million in 1999 to 221.6 million last year, with CD albums enjoying an 88.4 per cent share of the market.