Snow Patrol, Kasabian and The Stone Roses have been named as this year’s T in the Park headliners.
To sell 85,000 tickets has us on a par with the biggest festivals worldwide
Thousands of music fans are expected to flock to Balado, near Kinross, for the 18th annual festival in July.
Twenty more acts have been added to the line-up, including New Order, David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Twin Atlantic, Jessie J and Brits Critics’ Choice winner Emeli Sande, with more still to be named.
The event’s final batch of tickets are sold on Wednesday.
With a capacity of 85,000 people a day, T in the Park is said to be more populated than any city centre in Scotland.
Geoff Ellis, festival director, said: “It’s one of the strongest launches we’ve had and it’s a very diverse line-up. It’s important to have something for everyone because we’re a very small country and to sell 85,000 tickets has us on a par with the biggest festivals worldwide.
“If we were too one-dimensional we wouldn’t be selling 85,000 tickets but if you’re not a fan of pop you don’t need to go and see any pop acts. If you’re not a fan of dance music you can go and see guitar bands. I think because we have so many stages it does give us the ability to have lots of different bands playing over the weekend.”
Mr Ellis said T in the Park offers good value for money.
He said: “We’ve only gone up £4 (€4.7) on the weekend tickets on the previous year and our costs have gone up a lot more than the equivalent to that unfortunately. We’re very conscious that money is always tight, whether there’s a recession on or not, so we’ve always been conscious of ticket prices.
“It works out at around 89p (€1) per band which is kind of the equivalent cost of downloading one track from iTunes. So effectively you could say the festival is like an iPod playlist for live music.
“I think festivals generally are good value for money but I think T in the Park, because it has more bands playing than the majority of festivals, becomes even better value for money.”
The “unique spirit” of the T in the Park audience sets it aside from any other festival in the UK, he insisted.
“The passion and the excitement of the audience is not something that’s seen elsewhere, and I mean that worldwide. I’ve been to festivals in loads of different countries and they don’t have the energy and the passion that the T in the Park audience has every year.”
George Kyle, head of sponsorship at Tennent’s Lager, said: “It has been an incredible event since day one. It’s grown to the dreams that we had 20 years ago. It’s a right of passage for tens of thousands of people in Scotland and it’s something that puts Scotland on a world stage. It shows the best of us and people love it.”