Monday's announcement may include tours for heavyweights like Eric Clapton, Jack Johnson, Radiohead, Rod Stewart, the Police, Jimmy Buffett, Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Kenny Chesney, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and James Taylor. All with proven drawing power. With that in mind, the Billboard article had this hopeful note for the 2008 concert season, "With Live Nation's tours, tours and concerts from AEG Live and other promoters, as well as a booming festival market, the live music business may see a return to record numbers after a disappointing 2007 that saw double-digit decreases in both attendance and dollars."

We, on the other hand, are a bit more cynical and think that the slowing economy and the addition of things like parking taxes to each ticket, may prevent the turn around that Billboard expects. It looks like the parking fees average $6.00 per ticket for events at Live Nation venues (at least the ones we checked). So if you and three friends buy tickets and go to the show together, what used to cost you maybe $10 for parking, now costs you $24.00. Great isn't it? We saw a Live Nation venue call this fee nominal. And here we naively thought that Live Nation had one goal of countering Ticketmaster's excessive charges. How silly of us. Stay tuned to December or early next January when the 2008 concert box office numbers come in and we***shock*** read that concert attendance was down once again! That's despite plenty of worthy concerts this summer to choose from. The economy isn't exactly doing that great, so every dollar counts and people have less dollars to spend this summer on things like concerts, so hiking fees at this time wasn't such a great idea. Oh well, the music biz at large seems to have an excess amount of feet to shoot. Plus Live Nation needs to pay for these big deals they have been making lately.