Glastonbury might still draw big bands and big crowds, but it is no longer considered the UK’s best music festival.

With the exception of last year when the world-famous event was put on hold, Glastonbury has always been judged best festival in music magazine NME’s annual survey. But now Glastonbury has been toppled by Carling Weekend: Reading and Leeds, which this summer featured the Kaiser Chiefs and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis staged his first music event in 1970 at Worthy Farm, in the village of Pilton, Somerset, hoping to make enough money to pay off his mortgage.

To attract punters to the line-up, which included Marc Bolan and T Rex, he offered free milk from his dairy herd. Around 1,500 attended the event, then known as the Pilton Festival, and Eavis made a loss. Since then, Glastonbury has grown to attract more than 175,000 festival-goers and in excess of 2,000 acts performing on 35 different stages over the three days.

NME's Great Festival Poll also found 50% of people thought festival ticket prices were a "rip-off". Arcade Fire were named this year's favourite band of the festivals.

More than 2,000 festival-goers were interviewed for the survey, which put the Carling Weekend in first place, followed by Glastonbury in second, T in the Park in Scotland and the Oxygen Festival in Ireland in joint third place, followed by the V Festival.

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