Present day (2000-Present)

In the early 2000s the entire music industry was shaken by claims of massive theft of music rights using file-sharing tools such as Napster, resulting in lawsuits against private file-sharers by the recording industry group the RIAA.

After existing in the musical underground, garage rock saw a resurgence of popularity in the early 2000s, with the garage rock revival. Bands like The White Stripes, The Strokes, Jet, The Vines, and The Hives all released successful singles and albums. This wave is often referred to as back-to-basics rock because of its raw sound. Currently popular rock trends include a style of pop-punk that is often referred to as emo (though some disagree with that label), which draws its style from softer punk and alternative rock styles from the 1980s. Many new bands have become well-known since 2001, including Jimmy Eat World, Hawthorne Heights, Dashboard Confessional and Taking Back Sunday; however, this subgenre has come to be frequently maligned by many rock enthusiasts. Additionally, the retro trend has led to the revitalization of dance-rock. Bands like Franz Ferdinand, Hot Hot Heat, The Killers and The Bravery mix post-punk sensibilities with electronic beats.

The biggest factor that has contributed to the resurgence of rock music is the rise of paid digital downloads in the 2000s. During the 90s, the importance of the buyable music single faded when Billboard allowed singles without buyable, album-separate versions to enter its Hot 100 chart (charting only with radio airplay). The vast majority of songs bought on paid download sites are singles bought from their albums; songs that are bought on a song-by-song basis off artist's albums are considered sales of singles, even though they have no official buyable single.

Meanwhile, "Top 40" music today is dependent on either synthesizer orchestration or sampling, prominent in such pop artists like Gwen Stefani, Ashlee Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, Hilary Duff and Kelly Clarkson.

During much of the 2000s, hip hop music dominated the US charts pop charts, with artists such as 50 cent, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Nelly, Eminem and Jay Z selling millions of records since the turn of the millennium. According to a recent study by Teenage Research Unlimited, hip hop is the most popular format of music among adults from ages 18-34. R&B acts like Mariah Carey , Usher and Alicia Keys are very popular on the pop charts, although with the exception of Carey, none of these acts, rap or R&B, sell as many albums as rock did. Nearly all of the best selling albums of all time are still rock.
In many other nations, such as the UK and Australia, rock figures much more prominently in album sales than in the US. Rap and hip hop, although popular in those nations, are not as dominant as in the USA. American bands such as The White Stripes, The Killers and The Strokes have more success in the UK than in the USA, and British bands such as The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Coldplay, Oasis, Kaiser Chiefs, Gorillaz, and Arctic Monkeys are still the UK's biggest selling artists. Emo remains a marginal genre, although it is arguably growing in popularity in the UK.