Only Foals Rush In

Music Week has revealed that the UK music industry is producing an average of 12 new arena level headline acts each year.

As documented here, the calendars of arenas in London, Manchester and Birmingham since 2007 were analysed for the results. New arena headlining artists included Foals (pictured), who recently headlined Wembley, Adele, The Libertines, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Years & Years, Rudimental and The 1975 alongside mainstream pop acts such as Little Mix and Ellie Goulding.

On average, it takes an act five years from releasing their debut album to graduating to an arena, although 43% of headliners achieve the status within three years.

Similar research last year revealed that just five new mainstream festival headliners were created over the past decade. This is a far more positive story but there are caveats- how many of those arena shows were full capacity and sold out, for example?

There is also the question of genre, with mainstream pop acts unlikely to be considered viable headliners for many festivals in the UK, with the exception of say, V Festival, which has just announced Justin Bieber and Rihanna for 2016.