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The Performing Rights Society has confirmed that live UK music is worth more money now than record sales, according to the chief economist of the Performing Rights Society

Will Page told BBC 6, “We've been doing some maths back at the office. The changing of the guard has already taken place for the first time in the history of the British music industry.”

Many live bands will welcome the thought of increased revenue from live performances and less reliance on the top 40 UK music charts. Live music revenue has lagged behind record sales since the inception of the PRS. UK tour dates are likely to become more popular with bands following this latest revelation from the PRS.

"We have all the data on live music at the PRS because we license all live performances around the country, so we're able to put a number on how much live music is worth, By scaling up, factoring in VAT, adding the booking fee, we came to a number of £904m [for live music]. So then it came to looking at how much the recorded music industry is worth ... and in 2008 it came in at £896m."

Will Page has previously criticised the long tail theory of music, claiming it was untrue and backing up this by showing that over 80% of songs on the internet hadn’t sold a single copy.  Page also worked with Radiohead and helped them with their experiment to let fans decide what they want to pay for their album, In Rainbows.