The Reading and Leeds festivals are along with Glastonbury, the UK leading music festivals. The Reading festival began it’s life in 1961 as a the National Jazz Festival, the brainchild of Marquee club founder Harold Pendleton. However it wasn’t 1971 that the festival finally settled in Reading after having wandered around various areas of South East England.

Ever since then though the Reading festival has been synonymous with all forms of rock and alternative music and is the longest running popular music festival in the world today, proving so popular that in 1999 the Leeds leg of the festival was also added.

This years line-up doesn’t break with any kind of tradition, in fact, if anything, the line up is even more of a melting pot for rock, punk, metal and alternative music than usual. Reading and Leeds have always been more of a festival for music purists offering relatively little of the side-show of Glastonbury.

For the purposes of playlisting, we’ve divided the festival into one playlist per stage; This year the NME/Radio 1 stage plays host to the likes of The Vaccines, Noah & the Whale, Beady Eye, Bombay Bicycle Club, Warpaint as well as alt-rock legends Jane’s Addiction and what may well be one of the last ever sets for Mike Skinner as The Streets.