Live music lovers boost UK economy by £3bn

A new report has found that fans travelling around the country for music events like the Download festival boosted the economy by £3.1bn in 2014.

The Wish You Were Here study carried out by UK Music discovered a total of 9.5m people attended gigs and festivals across the country last year – a 34% increase between 2011-2014.

The research also found out that live music sustained 38,238 full-time jobs and that 546,000 fans from overseas came to the UK to see their favourite artists in the same period, each spending £751 on average.

Culture Secretary John Whittingdale says: “British music is legendary around the world and continues to go from strength to strength, with UK artists now accounting for one in seven albums sold worldwide.”

UK Music chairman Andy Heath adds: “More international music tourists are coming to the UK and more Brits are travelling further afield to gigs.

“The average spend by international music tourists has increased by 13% during this period while the total exports have grown by less than 2%. If we want an export-led recovery, we need music tourists to keep coming to the UK.”

UK Music is made up of industry groups representing musicians, songwriters, labels, producers and others.

Scott Munro
Louder e-commerce editor

Scott has spent more than 30 years in newspapers and magazines as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. After initially joining our news desk in the summer of 2014, he moved to the e-commerce team full-time in 2020. He maintains Louder’s buyer’s guides, scouts out the best deals for music fans and reviews headphones, speakers, books and more. He's written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog and has previous written for publications including IGN, the Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to video games, travel and whisky. Scott grew up listening to rock and prog, cutting his teeth on bands such as Marillion and Magnum before his focus shifted to alternative and post-punk in the late 80s. His favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Drab Majesty, but he also still has a deep love of Rush.