No live music conference is complete without debating the perennial question: where are our new festival headliners? But the impressive flow of new arena headliners is regularly overlooked.

Music Week analysed the calendars of arenas in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow over the past decade, and found the UK music business has developed an average of 13 new arena headline acts a year.

Last year saw a record 19 artists rise to the big leagues. Not all were full-scale UK ...