Complaints about thumping bass lines at music events could be avoided by increasingly widespread "silent festivals" where headphones are used to feel the beat.

At these events, only people wearing wireless headphones are able to hear the music. They can be held in non-soundproofed places, making it easier to keep down costs than at standard music events.

The first such silent festival is believed to have taken place in the Netherlands during the 2000s, and they now feature at major festivals in Japan like Summer Sonic.

A silent festival even took place last December at Kyoto's Nishi Honganji Temple, a place more usually associated with contemplative silence than partying. The audience was free to sit down or dance around as they would to normal live music.

Keiichi Nishio, 42, an office worker from the eastern Japan city of Maebashi, told Kyodo News, "There was this silent sense of belonging. I was amazed to find it happening in a place like this."

The event was organized by Yu Amemiya, 26, who runs Silent It, a company that plans silent festivals.

Amemiya was inspired by the desire to create affordable public events where people could share the music they love without annoying others with the noise.

For the last two years, Amemiya has been running similar events at campus festivals, public bathhouses and street markets, and also regularly holds silent festivals at the Sky Circus observatory in Tokyo's Ikebukuro.

(Supplied photo)

Photographs and social media posts featured on the company website show people looking amused and occasionally awkward. One post reads, "It is so strange when you take off your headphones and look around at 100 people going crazy in a silent room."

Anyone attending is told to smile when they make eye contact with another person, and move as they feel comfortable.

"People should ignore what's going on around them and just let themselves be free," Amemiya said hopefully.