Undeterred by the prospect of wading through a quagmire to reach chemical lavatories or paying inflated prices for lager in plastic cups, 6.5 million people travelled to music festivals and concerts in Britain last year, spending £2.2bn in the process.
Overseas visitors made up 6% of those music fans but accounted for 20% of the money spent attending festivals and gigs, according to a report by Visit Britain.
In a business that boosts local economies and supports 24,000 jobs a year, £1.3bn was spent on tickets, transport and accommodation, with another £914m going on food, drink and other purchases.
Britain may lag behind the US, France and Switzerland when it comes to business innovation, but pop artists such as One Direction and Adele are global attractions. Glastonbury is the biggest green-field festival in the world and draws visitors and acts from around the globe.
Tickets for next year's Glastonbury festival sold out in record time on Sunday as more than 1 million people jostled to buy 120,000 tickets priced at £210 each. Bookmakers have stopped taking bets on Fleetwood Mac headlining, with Daft Punk and Depeche Mode also in the running.
Visit Britain, the government's tourism agency, said its research showed the pulling power of UK music and its potential to boost tourism. It called for a strategy to pull in more overseas music fans and for towns and cities to copy Liverpool's efforts to capitalise on the Beatles.
Visit Britain chief executive Sandie Dawe said: "This will act as a catalyst for us all to ramp up our activity and forge better relationships with festival organisers, promoters, venues and producers."
Festivals have mushroomed in recent years as demand for live events has increased and artists faced with declining record sales have turned to touring for income.
London, home to giant venues such as the O2 Arena and Hyde park, attracts 1.8 million music tourists a year or 28% of the total.
Visit Britain said the figures, compiled by Oxford Economics, were conservative because they only included ticketed events at venues with capacities of 1,500 or more. The criteria excluded events such as the Notting Hill carnival and Beatles tours in Liverpool.
