People all around the world love pop music. Nowhere is this more evident than in Britain. In fact, since the 1950s, the island has steadily produced some of the biggest pop acts in history: the Spice Girls, One Direction, Westlife, and Take That, just to name a few.

So perhaps it's no surprise that Official Charts Company - a website that complies various official UK record charts - recently announced that pop remained the UK's favorite musical genre for the second year running, thanks to singles from Carly Rae Jepsen and Psy!

According to a new study on British music buying tastes, pop music took 38.5 percent of the singles market in 2012. Official Charts Company credited Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" and Psy's "Gangnam Style," both considered last year's summer anthems, for fueling pop to the top. In addition, albums from Emeli Sande and One Direction helped the genre secure 33.5 percent of the UK's albums market.

"British music fans' love affair with pop music continued in 2012," said Geoff Taylor, chief executive at BPI, the British record industry's trade association. "In the singles market, pop grabbed its biggest share for 10 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."

However, despite pop's dominance, the biggest-selling single of 2012 in the UK was "Somebody That I Used to Know," a rock track by Gotye, a Belgian-Australian musician. Overall, rock music had 18 percent of the singles market, and its share of album sales was 31.3 percent.

This is "good news for rock fans," Taylor said, as "the genre [is] fighting back to its strongest performance since 2008.

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

Thanks to Nicki Minaji's Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded and Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch The Throne, hip-hop's singles market grew slightly from 10.2 percent in 2011 to 10.7 percent last year. However by contrast, R&B's shares of the singles market dropped significantly from 17.2 percent to 12.3 percent and also in the albums market, down from 10.1 percent to 7.2 percent in 2012.