Pop is still the UK’s favourite genre of music!

Thanks to singles from Carly Rae Jepsen and Psy, and albums from Emeli Sande and One Direction, pop remains the UK’s favourite musical genre for the second year running, according to new study on British music buying tastes.

We are a nation of pop music fans, reveals a new report from music industry trade body The BPI based on Official Charts Company sales data.

Thanks to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe and Psy’s Gangnam Style, pop took the lion’s share of the singles market (38.5%) in 2012, while albums from Emeli Sande and One Direction helped pop secure a 33.5% of the UK’s albums market during last year - the genre’s second biggest share since 1999.

Despite pop’s dominance, the biggest-selling single of 2012 was a rock track – Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know FT Kimbra. Fun.’s We Are Young FT Janelle Monae, which also finished in the Top 3, helped increase rock’s share of the singles market from 18% in 2011, to 20% in 2012. Mumford And Sons’ Babel and Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto helped rock increase its share of album sales in 2012 to 31.3%, up from 29.4% the previous year.

“British music fans’ love affair with pop music continued in 2012, fuelled by a strong album releases from home-grown talent,” says Geoff Taylor, The BPI’s Chief Executive. “But there is good news for rock fans too, with the genre fighting back to its strongest performance since 2008. In the singles market, pop grabbed its biggest share for ten years. The great range of digital music services in the UK, integrated into many mobile devices, is making it easy for younger music fans to get into buying music.”

“It is apt that, in the year that we celebrated 60 years of the Official Singles Chart, pop music remained as robust as ever in 2012,” added Martin Talbot, the Official Charts Company’s Managing Director. “But, with many commentators predicting that guitar music will return over the next couple of years, it is also notable that rock music, in its broadest sense, also rebounded with Coldplay, Mumford And Sons and Gotye enjoying very successful years in their own right.”

Calvin Harris’ 18 Months and David Guetta’s Nothing But The Beat helped dance music’s market share increase to 6.3% share - its best for three years. However, on the singles market, dance music remained static at 13.8%.

Hip-hop saw its fortunes revived slightly on the albums market after a big drop in 2011 thanks to Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded and Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch The Throne (up from 3.4% to 3.5%). While Nicki Minaj’s Starships and Flo Rida FT Sia’s Wild Ones helped hip-hop share of the singles market grow form 10.2% to 10.7%. By contrast, R&B’s share of the singles market dropped significantly from 17.2% to 12.3%, and down from 10.01% to 7.2% of the albums market last year.

We'll be brining you the Top 10 biggest selling singles and albums from each genre later this week. Make sure you're following OfficialCharts.com on Facebook and Twitter to find out first!