While the British live music industry enjoys a boom summer as the major festivals experience record ticket sales - the US's summer looks less rosy with the live industry still in decline.
A number of big tours in the US have had to scale down their operations and cancel dates due to slow ticket sales. Mariah Carey's Charmbracelet tour was last week rescheduled with planned arena dates swapped for smaller theatre gigs.
Beck's US tour has also been scaled due to slow ticket sales. The down-sizing included dropping Dashboard Confessional from the bill because of the high cost of high profile support.
Other reports suggest that tickets for the Flaming Lips, Dixie Chicks, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and the Lollapalooza are all slow sellers.
And while Justin has added a number of dates to a second UK leg of his 'Justified' world tour - the US promoters admit that, while all shows are likely to be near capacity on the night, sales for the Justin/Christina joint tour have been slower in some areas than they had anticipated.
Insiders have suggested the war, SARS and the faltering economy have all contributed to the slump. Others say ever rising ticket prices are to blame – live trade magazine Pollstar reckons the average ticket price is up $10 since 1999.
On a more positive note Pollstar's editor said: "There are always going to be pockets of shows where acts don't do well. As long as promoters are scaling their expectations to what the market can bear, they should be OK."