By the mid-1990s, the term "alternative music" had lost much of its original meaning as rock radio and record buyers embraced increasingly slick, commercialized, and highly marketed forms of the genre. At the end of the decade, hip hop music had pushed much of alternative rock out of the mainstream, and most of what was left played pop punk and highly polished versions of a grunge/rock mishmash. Many acts that, by choice or fate, remained outside the commercial mainstream became part of the indie rock movement. Indie rock acts placed a premium on maintaining complete control of their music and careers, often releasing albums on their own independent record labels and relying on touring, word-of-mouth, and airplay on independent or college radio stations for promotion. Linked by an ethos more than a musical approach, the indie rock movement encompasses a wide range of styles, from hard-edged, grunge influenced bands like The Cranberries and Superchunk to do-it-yourself experimental bands like Pavement to punk-folk singers such as Ani DiFranco. Currently, many countries have an extensive local indie scene, flourishing with bands with much less popularity than commercial bands, just enough of it to survive inside the respective country, but virtually unknown outside them.
One result of the 1970s punk explosion was pop punk. Championed by bands such as The Buzzcocks and The Ramones, the genre was never as commercially successful as the name may have suggested, but its influence can be still be heard in many artists today; the fusion of pop melodies, rapid-fire playing of instruments, and the raw and visceral lyrics and sound of punk rock is apparent in everyone from Nirvana to Oasis. In the 2000s, pop punk is used to describe modern rock bands with a heavy pop influence such as Green Day and The Offspring are common examples of the sub-genre, while Blink-182 brought the sub-genre to new commercial heights in the late nineties to early 2000s.
In the wake of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain's death, a new style of music called post-grunge evolved. Similar to the relationship between pop punk and punk rock, post-grunge differed from grunge in its more radio-friendly pop-oriented sound. After Australia's Silverchair achieved international success with their debut album Frogstomp record labels began to actively search for the "next Nirvana". Former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl's new band the Foo Fighters helped further popularize the genre, and other bands such as Bush, Creed, Audioslave, Candlebox, Collective Soul, Goo Goo Dolls, Everclear and Live helped cement post-grunge as one of the most commercially viable sub-genres of the late 1990s. Female solo artist Alanis Morissette also found success while being labeled under the post-grunge tag. In 1995, her album Jagged Little Pill became a major hit by featuring blunt, revealing songs such as "You Oughta Know". Combining the confessional, female-centered lyrics of artists such as Tori Amos with a post-grunge, guitar-based sound created by producer Glen Ballard, it succeeded in moving the introspection that had become so common in grunge to the mainstream. The success of Jagged Little Pill influenced successful more pop-oriented female artists during the late 90s including Fiona Apple, Jewel and Liz Phair. In the beginning of the 21'st century more post-grunge bands began to emerge including Breaking Benjamin, Seether, 3 Doors Down.
Hip hop and rap gained attention from rock acts in the early 80's. The Clash ("The Magnificent Seven") and Blondie ("Rapture") were the first two rock acts to merge their sounds with hip hop. Early crossover acts include Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. In 1990, Faith No More broke into the mainstream with their success of the single 'Epic', which combined heavy metal with rap. This paved ways for bands like Rage Against the Machine and later Limp Bizkit, Korn and Slipknot. This brought a fresh sound by combining the turntable scratching of rap and with the distorted guitars of metal-oriented rock. Later in the decade this style, which contained a mix of grunge, metal, and hip-hop, became known as rap rock and spawned a wave of successful bands like Linkin Park and P.O.D.. Many of these bands also considered themselves a part of the similar genre nu metal.
Through the turn of the century, more bands broke out like Papa Roach whose major label debut Infest became a platinum hit. Other bands like P.O.D and Disturbed also had mainstream success. By 2001 nu metal reached its peak as record labels signed many nu metal bands. Though new bands were breaking out, established bands who started the genre had massive successful hit albums like Staind (Break the Cycle), P.O.D (Satellite), Slipknot (Iowa) and Linkin Park (Hybrid Theory).
By 2002, signs that nu metal's mainstream popularity was weakening were apparent. Korn's long awaited fifth album Untouchables and Papa Roach's second album Lovehatetragedy didn't sell as well as their previous albums. Nu metal bands became less played on rock radio stations and MTV began focusing less on these bands and more on pop punk/Emo bands. Since then, many bands have changed their sound to more conventional Rock music/Heavy metal music.
In the early 2000s the entire music industry was shaken by claims of massive piracy using online music file-sharing software such as Napster, resulting in lawsuits against private file-sharers by the recording industry group the RIAA. During much of the 2000s, rock has not featured as prominently in album sales in the US as in other countries such as the UK and Australia. Another reason for the decline in album sales is the rise in popularity of Hip Hop on many music charts.
The biggest factor that affected the production and distribution of rock music was the rise of paid digital downloads in the 2000s. During the 1990s, 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.
In the mid-1980s, the term emo described a subgenre of hardcore punk which stemmed from the Washington, D.C. music scene. In later years, the term emocore, short for "emotional hardcore", was also used to describe the emotional performances of bands in the Washington, D.C. scene and some of the offshoot regional scenes such as Rites of Spring, Embrace or Moss Icon. In the mid-1990s, the term emo began to refer to the indie scene that followed the influences of Fugazi, which itself was an offshoot of the first wave of emo. Bands including Sunny Day Real Estate, Jimmy Eat World, and Texas Is the Reason had a more indie rock style of emo, more melodic and less chaotic.
While Jimmy Eat World had played emocore-style music early in their career, by the time of the release of their 2001 album Bleed American, the band had downplayed its emo influences, releasing more pop-oriented singles such as "The Middle" and "Sweetness". Newer bands that sounded like Jimmy Eat World (and, in some cases, like the more melodic emo bands of the late 90s) were soon included in the genre.
2003 saw the success of Chris Carrabba, the former singer of emo band Further Seems Forever, and his project Dashboard Confessional. Carraba found himself part of the emerging "popular" emo scene. Carrabba's music featured lyrics founded in deep diary-like outpourings of emotion. While certainly emotional, the new "emo" had a far greater appeal amongst adolescents than its earlier incarnations.
At the same time, use of the term "emo" expanded beyond the musical genre, which added to the confusion surrounding the term. The word "emo" became associated with open displays of strong emotion. Common fashion styles and attitudes that were becoming idiomatic of fans of similar "emo" bands also began to be referred to as "emo." As a result, bands that were loosely associated with "emo" trends or simply demonstrated emotion began to be referred to as emo.
In a strange twist, screamo, a more aggressive sub-genre of emo that began in the early 1990s, also had a reformulation of sound and has found greater popularity in recent years through bands such as Glassjaw. The difficulty in defining "emo" as a genre may have started at the very beginning.
In the early 2000s, a garage rock revival gained mainstream appeal and commercial airplay, something that had eluded garage rock bands of the past. This was led by four bands, The Hives (from Sweden), The Vines (from Australia), The Strokes (from New York), and The White Stripes (From Detroit), christened by the media as the "The" bands, or "The saviours of rock 'n' roll". Other products of the Detroit rock scene included; The Von Bondies, Electric 6, The Dirtbombs and The Detroit Cobras. Elsewhere, other lesser-known acts such as Billy Childish and The Buff Medways from Britain, The (International) Noise Conspiracy from Sweden, The 5.6.7.8's from Japan, and the Oblivians from Memphis enjoyed moderate underground success and appeal. Other notable bands that enjoyed commercial success, were The Libertines, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Datsuns and the Kings of Leon.