The Music Venue Trust said its members normally sell about 20 million tickets per year in total, but that the figure is expected to drop to 15 million this year.

There has been a “dramatic decrease in the total amount of live music in our communities” and an “increasingly small number of places [are] included on the touring circuit”, it said.

Mr Collins, who also spoke at Beyond the Music, said: “We hear tales of international artists skipping the UK or saying, I’ll play London because it’s London, but instead of doing six shows in the UK, I’m going to do two.

“When it comes to programming tours, you’re thinking, does it make sense to play Manchester? Does it make sense to play Birmingham? If I do those two, does it make sense to play Leeds and Liverpool, or are they just too close and actually we’re just going to have to get fans to commute across?

“So the risk is that we end up with a truncated touring route, which becomes a spine of the country – London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow – and then large swathes of the country are missing out on seeing those artists.”

Coldplay bucked that trend by choosing to play in Hull next summer. But Hull’s Craven Park Stadium and Wembley Stadium in London will be the only UK venues on the band’s 2025 world tour.

Businesses like hotels, bars and taxis in other towns and cities miss out on income when bands don’t visit, and overseas acts often don’t hire British crews for shorter UK tours, Mr Collins said.

He wants the government to cut VAT on gig tickets from the full 20% rate. It is 10% or below in countries like France, Germany and Italy.

“That is a weight putting a false ceiling on the number of shows that we could be doing, the number of tours that could be happening, the number of festivals that we could be offering up to people,” he said.

A HM Treasury spokesperson responded: “We do not comment on speculation around tax changes outside of fiscal events.”