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'The Queen' is the best selling record since 1956 amongst British music fans, it appears.

The Office for National Statistics has revealed that Brits have been buying rock songs of Queen, Abba and Dire Straits in greater numbers than almost anything else.

And despite the American rock and roll, Brit consumers have been resolutely conservative in their musical tastes.

Queen''s Greatest Hits was first released in 1981 and has sold 5.7 million, making it the best selling album of all time in Britain, helped by reissues, most notably after the death of the lead singer Freddie Mercury ten years later.

Abba has sold 4.6 million of its greatest hits, Gold, making it the third bestselling album behind The Beatle''s Sgt. Pepper''s Lonely Heart''s Club Band.

Oasis, with its What''s The Story Morning Glory, which came to exemplify the Brit Pop movement of the time, sold 4.4 million, while Dire Straits''s Brothers in Arms, sold 4.1 million.

"Dire Straits may not be fashionable now but they were huge. 1985 was the year of Live Aid and they were one of the stars of that event. And Brothers in Arms was the defining album of what was then an amazing, aspirational technology: compact disc," the Telegraph quoted Gennaro Castaldo, at HMV, as saying.

"The reason the Beatles or Abba are successful is because tonnes of people born after the bands split up are still buying the music - be it on digital, vinyl or CD."

The ONS figures also indicated that 98 per cent of all singles are now downloaded - most consumers prefer to buy albums in a physical format.

Just 12 per cent of albums bought last year were downloaded. The rest were bought as either CDs, or even - in the case of 230,000 copies - vinyl.