Live music revenues have overtaken income from sales of recorded music in Britain for the first time.

For years, bands would embark on loss-making tours around the world in an attempt to drum up sales for their latest album, but now the practice has been turned on its head, with groups more likely to give their records away in order to sell tickets to their shows.

The data, compiled by PRS for Music, the official body that collects and distributes royalties for British songwriters and music publishers, shows that live music generated £1.28 billion in 2008, compared with £1.24 billion yielded by the recorded music business. Last year global record sales fell to their lowest level since 1986, with album sales down 11 per cent and record company revenues tumbling 13 per cent in Britain. This year that figure is expected to continue to fall.

At the same time artists have embarked on huge tours, the most recent being Michael Jackson’s comeback performances in June, in which 50 concerts at the O2 arena in East London sold out within minutes of the tickets becoming available. This was matched only by Take That’s summer tour, The Circus — Live, which sold 600,000 tickets in five hours, and major summer festivals at Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds that have sold out. Two years ago, Prince gave away his album to fans who bought a ticket to his show. No Doubt, fronted by Gwen Stefani, are to take that one step farther by giving away their entire digital audio catalogue to those who buy top-rate tickets to their summer shows.

Will Page, of PRS, which undertook the research, said: “The face value of the ticket is just the tip of the iceberg.” He added that extra revenue was generated through “secondary ticket values” on websites such as eBay and Viagogo, as well as revenues from food, beverages, merchandise, sponsorship and branding. Live music had become “big business”, he added.

Stuart Galbraith, a tour promoter for bands such as Metallica and Simply Red, has set up a new rock festival for this summer, Sonisphere, at Knebworth, Hertfordshire.

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