Rock and roll was the music genre that defined generation after generation, but that may no longer be the case.
Rock music is showing signs of struggle in 2025, with touring revenue and chart dominance beginning to shift away from its traditional stronghold. Billboard's year-end Boxscore charts for 2025 reveal that while rock acts such as Coldplay, Imagine Dragons and Iron Maiden still appear among the top-grossing tours, the genre's overall share of the live-music revenue pool has declined. Rock accounted for only about 30.2% of the Top 100 tour grosses in 2025, a drop from its greater dominance in past decades.
This shift comes as pop, R&B and hip-hop tours continue to outgross most rock outings. In the age of the Taylor Swift's Eras Tour and Beyonce's Cowboy Carter Tour, rock has taken a backseat. Despite Coldplay being the top-grossing rock tour of 2025, it only grossed $465M, a mere quarter of the Eras Tour's gross.
Part of the shift likely stems from how audiences consume music today. Rock's influence remains culturally significant, and while rock shows still fill arenas, streaming trends and shifting listener tastes favor pop, R&B and hip-hop, genres that consistently produce new hit singles and chart-topping albums. That translates into larger, more frequent tours with broader market appeal.
Chris Martin and Will Champion of Coldplay perform onstage during a concert at Wembley Stadium. (Photo by Jo Hale/Redferns)Interestingly, it's largely classic rock artists that made Billboard's list of top-grossing rock tours, not newer bands. While Coldplay and Imagine Dragons took the top two spots, Iron Maiden, Eagles, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Paul McCartney, and Guns N' Roses took up several spots, pointing to a bigger cultural shift: While rock music was once the soundtrack of the rebellious, progressive younger generation, nowadays other genres speak to teens and young adults more directly.
Rock, however, isn't dead. Many rock bands still sell tens of thousands of tickets, and will continue to do so. But, the overall touring revenue picture suggests that rock, once the centerpiece of the concert industry, is no longer the undisputed powerhouse it once was.
For fans and artists alike, 2025 feels like a pivot point. Rock remains vibrant live, but its box-office dominance now exists alongside, rather than above, a diversified music landscape.
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