Billboard News

Zara Larsson and PinkPantheress‘ “Stateside” is one of the top 10 songs over in the States, and after the Swedish pop star worked her entire career to make it happen, she couldn’t be happier to finally achieve that milestone.

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In a candid TikTok posted Monday night (March 9), Larsson leveled with followers about how surreal it is to see the electro-dance-pop hit reach the top tier of the Billboard Hot 100 dated March 14. “My name is on the top 10 Billboard Hot 100 at No. 7,” she said while lounging back in her seat, her hair in pin curls. “Hi! It’s so crazy.”

“I’m 28, and this has been my dream for as long as I can remember,” she continued. “It’s weird having it happen. I really enjoy the fact that I’ve been doing this for a long, long, long time. It really is about the journey.”

“I get to see it happening, I get to be present, and I get to enjoy every single thing that’s happening to me,” she added. “It’s not even really about the charts — even though, yippee! — it’s really about people listening.”

Larsson signed off, “I’m really happy. Thank you so much.”

In the comments, the singer’s fans showered her with congratulations. “You deserve every DROPLET of this success and love,” one person wrote, while another listener added that it was “about time” Larsson nabbed that top 10 placement.

Another fan said, “I wish you SOOOOO much success girl … you deserve it!”

The new No. 7 peak for “Stateside” comes amid a career breakthrough more than a decade in the making for Larsson, whose rise first started in summer 2024 after her song “Symphony” began trending alongside a dolphin-related TikTok meme. In 2025, she dropped album Midnight Sun and hopped onto a version of PinkPantheress’ Fancy That track “Stateside,” which took off this year after Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu performed a viral routine to it.

“Being a part of culture and history, like I got to be with Alysa, is way more impactful to me personally than any chart position,” Larsson told Teen Vogue recently. “I felt so proud, not only because she won gold, but because she looked so joyful.”

Check out Larsson’s TikTok reacting to her Hot 100 feat below.

Summertime is for hanging with your friends, and what better way to enjoy the season than to gather 60,000 of them for a two-night stadium blowout? Old pals Niall Horan and Thomas Rhett announced a pair of such hangs on Tuesday morning (March 10) when they rolled out the dates for a two-night-only stadium stand this summer.

The Live Nation-promoted gigs will take place on July 9 at GEODIS Park in Nashville, Tenn., followed by a show at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pa. on July 18. The concerts will be the first time the pair have performed stadium headline shows together as well as the first-ever headline concerts at GEODIS Park for both men; Kashus Culpepper and Emily Ann Roberts will open both shows.

Tickets for Thomas Rhett & Niall Horan Live will go on sale beginning at 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday (March 11) through both artist’s fan clubs. Additional pre-sales will run throughout the week ahead of the general on-sale, which begins on Friday (March 13) at 10 a.m. local time; click here for general on-sale ticket information.

“Niall and I have been buddies for nearly a decade now, but one thing we’ve not done yet is officially tour together,” said Rhett in a statement. “There’s nothing I love more than being on the road alongside longtime friends — it’s going to be a blast for us and the fans.”

Horan added, “When TR brought up the idea of doing these, I immediately got so excited just thinking about it. We’ve been friends for ages and it just makes perfect sense.”

In October, Horan teamed up with his longtime friend Rhett on a re-worked version of the country singer’s “Old Tricks” from the deluxe version of his About a Woman album. At the time, Rhett said in a statement, “Niall and I have been buddies for six or seven years now — anytime I’m over in the U.K. or he’s in Nashville, we always try to link up. We’d talked about doing something together for a long time, but I never imagined it would be this song.”

Horan is gearing up to release his as-yet-untitled fourth solo studio album, with he LP’s emotional new single, “Dinner Party,” due out on March 20. Before hitting the road with Horan, Rhett will open a run of three stadium shows on Morgan Wallen’s Still the Problem tour beginning on April 10.

Before they formed the folk band Buffalo Traffic Jam, Frankie Cassidy, 23, and Nathan Ross, 22, were introduced on a hunch as freshmen at Montana State University. “I was DoorDashing and my girlfriend’s roommate at the time called me and was like, ‘I have this dude over that you should meet, I think you guys would be friends,’” Cassidy recalls. After a few games of Mario Kart together, he and Ross started to walk home — only to realize that they lived in the same dorm, on the same floor, just two doors down from one another.

Forming a band, however, was a slower process for the duo. They moved into an off-campus apartment sophomore year and would jam occasionally — Cassidy was studying architecture and Ross mechanical engineering, but they both brought their guitars to college. It wasn’t until the end of their junior year in 2024 that they started working on original music (with influences including Tyler Childers, Zach Bryan, The Districts and Punch Brothers) and later opened for a local act in their college town of Bozeman, Mont.

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That summer, while Cassidy was interning in his hometown of Baltimore, he and Ross started sending files back and forth in GarageBand. They continued the process while Cassidy studied abroad in Scotland the first semester of senior year. Despite the quality of the files getting “encrypted so bad,” says Cassidy, he and Ross managed to self-release a pair of tracks remotely: the jangly “Rescue Me” and aching “Forgot Your Roots,” both of which showcase Cassidy’s warm rasp and put Buffalo Traffic Jam on the map. 

“We made a TikTok carousel for ‘Rescue Me,’ and that was our first glimpse of success — kind of,” says Cassidy. “A lot of people were DMing our Instagram account. We didn’t think any of it was real until we got one official offer, and we didn’t know how the music industry worked at all.” He and Ross hired a traffic-ticket attorney to help them read the offer, and after two hours they asked, “If we were your children, would you want us to sign this?” The attorney told them not to.

That left the door open for Arista Records, which signed the act in May 2025. A management deal with Playdate’s Mason Romm and Nate Fenningdorf followed. “We came across Buffalo Traffic Jam when they had less than 100 followers on Instagram and TikTok,” says Fenningdorf. Off the bat, their unwavering commitment to be nothing but themselves had us [buy] in.”

By last October, Buffalo Traffic Jam was positioned for its big break — which came with the release of its debut EP, Take Me Home. The six-track project included standout single “Fool’s Gold,” a raspy folk-pop hit that has reaches a new No. 5 high on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart dated March 14. “My dad called me three weeks ago, freaking out: ‘You’re not going to believe it. [Your song] was on [SiriusXM station] The Spectrum!’” recalls Cassidy with a laugh. The hit also became a staple in their setlist while opening on tour for Dylan Gossett late last year.

Again, the song’s inspiration struck while the members were apart. After graduating in May 2025, Ross — who still lives with Cassidy in Bozeman — went home to Seattle for a weekend. “There’s one line in ‘Fool’s Gold’ where I say: ‘Hate being left alone/ It reminds me no one’s home,’” says Cassidy. “That week I was struggling a lot, because all of our friends left town after they graduated. I was like, ‘I’m going crazy in this house.’”

Even so, Ross returned home to new material from his bandmate. “There were a few different songs, and ‘Fool’s Gold’ was the one that really stood out to me,” he says. “The day after, we built it out.” Ross says the support from Arista led to new opportunities, like working with local producer Joe Becker and Seattle-based producer Ryan Hadlock (The Lumineers, Zach Bryan). “That was pretty scary at first,” says Ross. “There was a Lumineers platinum record right next to where we were recording.”

The two cite their sessions with Hadlock as the initial time everything felt different. “He’s got the classic studio board with all the buttons on it,” jokes Cassidy. They spent hours focused on the minutiae of tracks, with Cassidy recalling 30 takes of guitar alone for “Fool’s Gold.” But that precision helped the song become a hit.

Soon after its October release, Cassidy and Ross started hearing “Fool’s Gold” in downtown Bozeman at stores and restaurants. They even note that the bartender at one of their favorite spots is a big fan. “Hearing it on someone’s playlist or on radio — never thought that that was going to happen,” says Cassidy. “A year ago we were still in school. It’s so weird being in the same bar, but now we hear our music.”

“Sometimes I’ll see old friends that will post on social media [using] ‘Fool’s Gold’ and I don’t even know if they know I’m helping with that,” adds Ross. 

Fenningdorf credits the team’s “exhaustive digital strategy” for the hit’s success, pointing to the band’s quality over quantity approach online: “Every piece of content is heavily vetted prior to going live.” However, on other team-run accounts, the approach is just the opposite. “Throw a ton of s–t at the wall and see what sticks,” Fenningdorf says. “This has led to tens of millions of views within the past four months, with a majority for ‘Fool’s Gold.’”

While Cassidy and Ross would love to see a remix featuring Marcus Mumford, Hozier or Noah Kahan, for now, Buffalo Traffic Jam is set on consistency. The group believes that reliability, plus authenticity, is what has made “Fool’s Gold” such a success — and don’t want to switch up that formula now while preparing new music. Single “I Don’t Care” arrived in January, and another titled “Hanging on Hope” arrives March 13 as the two continue to work on a debut album. 

“We’re trying to keep doing exactly what we always do,” says Cassidy. “We’re still in Bozeman. People have been encouraging us to move to L.A., New York or Nashville — I just don’t think we’re going to be creative in those places.

“I like living like a degenerate in Montana,” he continues, seated next to Ross on their couch below a Coors Light mirror, which hangs below a painting of Bigfoot spooning a raccoon. “Writing ‘Fool’s Gold,’ it was a true song about how I was feeling at that moment. I think it goes hand-in-hand with our music, trying to stay as true as possible. We never write a song that we haven’t lived.”

A version of this story appears in the March 7, 2026, issue of Billboard.

Snoop Dogg has continued to keep 2Pac’s legacy alive decades after the late rapper’s passing. The West Coast legend’s Cali by Snoop brand is paying tribute to his Death Row running mate born Tupac Shakur with the release of the 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted wine on Tuesday (March 10).

The California Red blend commemorates the rap icons’ 1996 collaboration of the same name.

“It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years since Pac and I got together to make ‘2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted.’ Nobody did it like us, and I can’t think of a better way to honor his legacy than with a drink,” said Snoop Dogg in a statement. “This wine is perfect for celebrating with loved ones, and I’m looking forward to the people pourin’ a little out with me for my friend.”

Cali By Snoop also released an emotional tribute featuring Snoop reminiscing on the times he enjoyed with 2Pac in the ’90s, from the studio to courthouse victories and traveling out of the country. “In a lot of ways, we were the only ones that understood each other,” he said.

Snoop closed the clip out with a salute to Pac’s greatness, as he poured out a little red wine onto the floor in honor of his friend.

“It’s been an absolute privilege to work with Snoop Dogg and the Tupac Estate to develop a wine celebrating this historic collaboration, and worthy of two of Hip Hop’s greatest Icons,” John Wardley, who serves as the svp of brand, innovation and partnerships at Treasury Wine Estates, said in a statement. “The Cali by Snoop range has always pushed the boundaries of traditional wine culture. We are proud to honor Tupac and Snoop’s legacy with a truly unique wine.”

Pac died in September 1996 after being shot in Las Vegas in a drive-by. He was hospitalized for six days before being pronounced dead.

A few months before his death, “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” arrived in May; it served as a single on Pac’s All Eyez on Me. It’s also the only music video Snoop and 2Pac would film together.

Watch the video of Snoop celebrating the 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted wine release below:

Double P Publishing and Prajin Publishing has appointed Alex Flores as president and Teresa Romo as its first-ever vp.

Flores will oversee Double P Publishing and Prajin Publishing’s creative, administrative and strategic operations as well as lead songwriter development, catalog expansion and global partnerships. Romo will offer her expertise in música Mexicana to further strengthen the company’s leadership. Both will work closely with writers and producers while reinforcing the company’s commitment to artist-first development and long-term cultural impact.

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“Alex is a powerhouse executive with unmatched experience and vision,” said George Prajin, CEO and founder of Prajin Parlay and co-founder of Double P, in a statement. “Her leadership and creative background will help us continue to elevate Latin music on a global scale, while nurturing the next generation of writers and producers.”

“It’s an honor to join Double P/Prajin Publishing at such an exciting time for Latin music,” added Flores. “George has built a culture rooted in authenticity and artist empowerment, and I’m thrilled to collaborate with this incredible team to further amplify music and its creators on a global stage.”

Prior to her new role as president, Flores served as executive vp of music at Hello Sunshine/Candle Studios; senior vp of creative worldwide at BMI; and held senior leadership roles at BMG, Walt Disney Studios and Universal Pictures. Romo brings senior leadership experience from Kobalt, BMI, Universal Music Latin, Warner Music Group and NBCUniversal/Telemundo.

Flores will report directly to Prajin, while Romo is the first key executive hire under Flores’ leadership.

DJ/producer LP Giobbi will lead the PoWoW! at this year’s Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival when the Florida event returns for the first time since 2023 later this month, the festival announced Tuesday (March 10).

Giobbi will become the first woman to lead the Okeechobee superjam, where she’ll be joined by Goose‘s Rick Mitarotonda, Big Gigantic‘s Dominic Lalli, the Disco Biscuits‘ Aron Magner and other surprise guests.

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Since Okeechobee’s 2016 debut, the PoWoW! has hosted a range of artists, including Snoop Dogg, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Anderson .Paak, Solange, Skrillex, Mac Miller and The Roots.

“The PoWow is one of my favorite experiences we curate each year,” said the festival’s founder Julio Santo Domingo, better known as Rechulski. “It’s about bringing extraordinary artists together to create a truly once-in-a-lifetime moment, one where they push beyond the familiar and explore something entirely new in front of the fans. The fact that this year marks our first-ever female-led PoWow makes it even more powerful. Creating experiences that fans can only have at Okeechobee is central to what we do, and the PoWow is the ultimate expression of that vision.”

Cage the Elephant, Griz, Fisher and The Lumineers top the bill for Okeechobee, which features an eclectic mix of hip-hop, dance, jam and indie-rock artists. Other musical highlights will include the Aquachobee Dub Reggae Takeover (featuring Mykal Rose, Subatomic Sound System and more), Incendia (focused on underground and bass music) and the sundown-to-sunrise Jungle 51 Stage with a slew of notable DJs. Slated for March 19 to 22, this year’s Okeechobee marks the first time the festival, held in its namesake Florida town, has taken place since 2023, when ODESZA, Baby Keem, Griz, Excision, Goose and Turnstile were among the headliners.

“It’s an honor to return to Okeechobee after helping lay its foundation,” said Ben Baruch, who booked the festival’s first three years from 2016 to 2018 and returned to book this year’s edition alongside Dave Niedbalski and Rechulski, in a statement. “For 2026, our focus is on bringing back the magic of those early years – with a diverse, multi-genre lineup and unforgettable moments, collaborations and experiences that tap into the roots of what made Okeechobee so special from the very beginning.” (Through his 11E1even Group, Baruch manages Goose, The Disco Biscuits and Big Gigantic, among others.)

Notably, for the first time since 2019, Okeechobee will take place under the purview of Soundslinger, its original, independent ownership. From 2020 to 2023, it was owned by Live Nation affiliate Insomniac, the promoter behind major dance festivals including Electric Daisy Carnival. 

Last month, Okeechobee detailed a range of “Beyond The Music” offerings, including a farmers market specializing in Floridian goods, several dining experiences honoring global cultures and daily yoga, meditation and fitness classes. Its reimagined Chobeewobee Village will feature interactive art, hi-fi listening spaces, tarot readings and other unique, immersive activations.

When Tim Quirk ran content programming for Google Play in the early 2010s, he sat across the table from record labels, music publishers and movie studios four times a year for quarterly business reviews. These meetings, he says, “were like funerals.” Legacy entertainment was struggling, and executives blamed tech companies like Google for their problems. But Quirk’s job was by no means joyless; Google’s meetings with app-based gaming companies, on the other hand, “were f–king parties,” he says.

“Man, they loved us,” says Quirk of the developers behind hit games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga. “They were minting money. So I spent the four years I was at Google trying to figure out, ‘What do these guys know that these other people don’t?’ I was arrogant enough to think I’d figured it out.”

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Quirk decided that the gaming industry’s secret sauce was free apps that, once downloaded, offered in-app purchases and advertisements — and he wanted to bring that model to his first love, music. A musician himself and member of the alt-rock band Too Much Joy, Quirk had helped launch the early streaming service Rhapsody in the 2000s.

His first crack at this idea was Freeform, a startup that turned artists’ albums into individual apps, which was acquired by digital content company Zedge in 2017. Now, Quirk, currently senior vp of product at Zedge, is revamping Freeform for the next generation with the new superfan streaming app Tapedeck.

Tapedeck is a pay-as-you-go music streaming service aimed at increasing artist royalty payouts. It has a direct fan support model reminiscent of Bandcamp but with one key addition: streaming.

Quirk is hoping to fill a hole that’s opened in the superfan market when Bandcamp shrunk its operations after being sold twice in two years, first to Epic Games and then to Songtradr. And by adding a streaming component, Tapedeck is confronting the hotly debated topic of low royalty payouts on platforms like Spotify and YouTube.

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While streaming services maintain that they’ve injected huge sums into the music business, Quirk is among the many artist advocates who complain that royalty rates are still too low; Spotify pays a fraction of a cent per stream, and, under a new model adopted by the streamer in 2023, royalties don’t kick in until a song reaches 1,000 streams.

On Tapedeck, every song is worth at least a penny per stream from the very first listen. Quirk is betting on the idea that, when packaged the same way as an app like Candy Crush, paying artists what they’re worth can turn a profit. “If you go after superfans — people who proactively want to pay the artists more than they are asking for because they want to support musicians — there’s at least a $20 million a year business to be built,” Quirk says.

How does Tapedeck work?

It works so simply that I have to explain it over and over again to people I want to license content from because they can’t get their heads around how easy it is. It’s pay as you go. There’s no subscription fee. We use a virtual currency. And most importantly, licensers set their own rates. They say, “This is what I want per download. This is what I want per play.” The floor is a penny per play. We will not let you charge less than that. If you want to charge more than that, you can, if you think users will pay it.

Users redeem virtual currency for plays. We start everybody off with 50 free plays — we’re subsidizing the 50 free plays and the licensors are getting paid from the very first play. That’s a user acquisition cost for us. And then when the users run out of plays, they have a choice. They can just buy plays in packs. But if you don’t want to make the in-app purchase, you go to our offer wall. You can watch rewarded videos. Every rewarded video will earn you 10 free plays, because that’s what we’re getting from the advertisers. And then if you want more plays than that, but you still don’t want to pay money, you can just scroll through our offer wall like you can in any mobile game. And anytime you buy music in Tapedeck, there’s the price that the licensor is asking for, but then there are buttons to pay 2x, 3x or 5x, or you can enter your own amount.

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What’s the current status of the Tapedeck launch?

We launched on iOS as a pilot program in September. We came out of pilot in January. It was only iOS and U.S. originally, but we’re slowly turning on more countries. It’s available in the U.K. now, and web and Android are still to come.

What inspired you to develop this model for streaming compensation?

I’m on record rather publicly and loudly saying people are wasting their energy trying to get Spotify and YouTube to pay more. I’m not saying they shouldn’t. They absolutely should pay more, and you should expend some energy trying to raise those rates. But you can double those rates and it’s not going to have that much effect on a musician’s bottom line. So what I’ve been telling people for decades now is you need to look at your revenue as a musician, as a label, as a music manager, the same way mobile gaming companies do. It’s not about how many units you sell — it’s about your average revenue per user (ARPU). And you should be trying to grow that all the time. Now, your ARPU from Spotify and YouTube users is going to be pretty low. But that’s okay, because those are basically free funnels for getting people into your ecosystem. And what you want to do is get people from every other source where they can hear your music to your own [ecosystem]. This is what Freeform was trying to do; the industry term is superfans, but to me, it’s more than that. It’s people who are more deeply engaged than average. So it’s really just above-average fans.

What do you think it is about Tapedeck that is going to be successful at engaging those “above-average fans”?

We are paying as much as anyone possibly can. It’s an 80-20 split, and the licensors set their own prices. The main thing is, we are here to make it easier to make a living making music. That’s what gets me up in the morning. That’s what excites me. Even though I’ve been very publicly on the record saying, “Don’t waste your energy yelling at Spotify for their low payouts,” that’s different than, “We’re just not going to pay you for the first 1,000 streams.” I do not understand why people have not descended on Stockholm with pitchforks and torches. That should be illegal. That’s insane.

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How do you see Tapedeck in relation to existing superfan services like Bandcamp?

My elevator pitch for Tapedeck is it’s a Bandcamp that also monetizes streams. Bandcamp was briefly the one success story in the indie music world in that it was a technology company that musicians loved. I loved, past tense, them as much as any other musician did. Then they had the two dismal sales, and they laid off all the editorial staff. It’s so hard to get goodwill with musicians when you’re a technology company, and that has just been painful. So I guess if I’m playing nice with some of my friends who still work at Bandcamp, I would say we’re complementary, because they’re a download store, and we’re that plus a streaming service. But if I’m a little more realistic, we want to eat their lunch. We’re stepping into the breach.

What does the Tapedeck catalog look like now?

It’s all indie. I’ve told the Zedge board, I told all the developers: I’ve been here before, it’s this chicken and egg problem. In order to attract users to a new service, you need a catalog. In order to get the catalog, you need a bunch of users already. So that’s why we started out indie only. The first distributor we signed up was Symphonic. We’ve added a few more since then. The last time I was going out and licensing from independents, it was a lot easier than it is now. There’s been so much consolidation. Now, even when it’s an indie distributor, they’re often owned by a major label. The major label has to approve any new deal, and they won’t do it if you don’t write them at least a $500,000 check, which we’re not doing. So we’re focusing on the distributors we can get, and we’re going to be striking some individual artist deals with some bigger names — people who own their own masters. Our plan is to demonstrate there’s a better way with the artists who are willing to do it, and then wait. And once we get enough people making enough money from this, the major labels are going to come to us and knock on our door.

What is Tapedeck’s position on AI music?

We’re still figuring it out, because I’ve learned, to my detriment, that you can’t really be that nuanced when you’re speaking publicly. Social media in particular favors Manichaean worldviews — everything’s either all good or all terrible. And right now, the artist community thinks AI is all terrible. And I think it’s more subtle than that. As an artist, I find AI a useful tool. I do not ever want a song that was created by Suno. But [when used in the songwriting process] it saves so much time and money. We don’t have an articulated policy at the moment, just internal debates. But my personal assumption of where we’ll land is that we will take a dim view of wholly AI-created music, but we will not take such a dim view of music that people used AI in various ways that are timesaving.

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Looking a year ahead from now, where do you see Tapedeck?

Well, there’s what I want, and there’s what will probably happen. What I want is to have enough name artists in there who control their own masters who have licensed to us that at least one major has come knocking already, and so you’re starting to see a critical mass of content that the average music fan, not just the above average music fan, will have heard of. Realistically speaking, it’s probably going to be 18 months before the major labels actually get there.

What do you hope for five years from now?

Spotify is paying from the first listen, and they’re paying a penny per play because everybody had to match us. 

Bruno Mars dominates Billboard’s charts dated March 14, thanks to the debut of his new album, The Romantic.

Released on Feb. 27 (on Atlantic Records), the set launches atop the Billboard 200 with 186,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in its opening week, according to Luminate. Mars earns his first No. 1 debut and second leader overall, after 2013’s Unorthodox Jukebox.

The album also helps Mars jump from No. 11 to No. 1 on the Billboard Artist 100. He leads for an eighth week and for the first time since July 2017. All nine songs from The Romantic reach the Billboard Hot 100, led by the return of lead single “I Just Might” to No. 1 and “Risk It All” arriving in the top five — as Mars triples up atop the Artist 100, Billboard 200 and Hot 100 simultaneously for the first time.

Here’s a recap of Mars’ Hot 100 hits this week (all of which are debuts except where noted).

Rank, Title:
No. 1, “I Just Might” (up from No. 5; third week at No. 1)
No. 4, “Risk It All”
No. 25, “Cha Cha Cha”
No. 28, “God Was Showing Off”
No. 38, “Why You Wanna Fight?”
No. 42, “Dance With Me”
No. 43, “On My Soul”
No. 46, “Something Serious”
No. 54, “Nothing Left”

With eight debuts, Mars has now charted 44 total songs on the Hot 100 in his career. He first debuted on the ranking in February 2010 as featured on B.o.B’s “Nothin’ on You,” which spent two weeks at No. 1. He has logged 10 No. 1 hits, tying him with Janet Jackson and Stevie Wonder for the 10th-most all-time.

Four songs from The Romantic additionally chart on Hot R&B Songs: “I Just Might” reigns for an eighth week, followed by, in order at Nos. 5-8, “Cha Cha Cha,” “God Was Showing Off,” “Why You Wanna Fight?” and “On My Soul.”

The Artist 100 measures acts’ activity across key metrics of music consumption: album sales, track sales, radio airplay and streaming. Using a methodology comprising those metrics, the chart provides a weekly multidimensional ranking of artist popularity.

Hilary Duff fully expects to be hit with Lizzie McGuire questions whenever she’s in public, and Monday night’s (March 9) visit to The Tonight Show was no different. After host Jimmy Fallon gushed about loving the early aughts Disney Channel smash that made Duff a star, he asked her which young performer she was obsessed with as a kid.

“The Olsen Twins,” she said without hesitation, reeling off Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen classics such as their 1992 debut album, Brother For Sale. “When they were twin sister spies? I had it on video guys, my VHS! And I was obsessed with the Olsen Twins,” Duff recalled. She then dropped more names than a phone book, recalling attending Aaron Carter’s birthday party — before they dated — and meeting both of the Olsens. “‘I have arrived. I’ve made it, both of the Olsen twins are here,'” she recalled thinking at the time.

Duff, on hand to promote her first LP in 10 years, Luck … or Something, agreed to take some audience questions, beginning with one about her favorite on-screen love interest. Choosing between Austin Ames (Chad Michael Murray) in A Cinderella Story, Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) in Gossip Girl and “Paolo” (Yani Gellman) in The Lizzie McGuire Movie, the singer/actress chose Chad Michael Murray for his iconic slow walk up the bleachers.

She also talked about the nerves she’s feeling about her upcoming Lucky Me tour, her first arena swing in 20 years, and promised that there will be an expanded edition of Luck — which debuted in the top 10 across four Billboard album charts dated March 7 — coming out soon. The segment ended with mother of four Duff teaching Fallon the iconic choreography from her 2007 “With Love” dance routine.

Duff also stuck around for a round of the “Sip & Sing Challenge” game, in which she and Fallon had to take a sip of water and hold it in their mouth while singing. Fallon was up first, trying to burble his way though Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar.” Duff had no earthly idea what Fallon was up to, so when it was her turn to sip and sing Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic,” she made sure to provide more melody and the host instantly guessed the right answer.

Fallon did a bit better with Benson Boone’s “Mystical Magical,” though Duff could not come up with the artist or song title. And though she vigorously thought she was singing Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” the Roots had to laugh when she sang “Freedom” instead. The game ended with both taking gulps from their big cups and trying to make Roots drummer Questlove land on A-Ha’s “Take on Me.” He nailed it, naturally.

The visit ended with a sensual performance of the new album’s grown-up romance drama single “Roommates,” with Duff starting out draped over a leather chair in a white, gauzy floor-length strapless dress with a high-cut showing off her legs. “I only want the beginning, I don’t want the end/
Want the part where you say, ‘Goddamn’/ Back of the dive bar, giving you h–d/ Then sneak home late, wake up your roommates,” she sang while expressing sexual frustration on the track co-written with her husband, musician Matthew Koma, and Brian Phillips.

Watch Duff on The Tonight Show below.

Nearly 80% of institutional investors whose portfolios include music assets expect firms to earmark more money for investments in music in 2026, according to a new study conducted by the London-based financial communications firm Fourth Pillar.

The Music Investment Barometer report surveyed individuals from 125 firms working across the private equity, private credit, investment management, pensions, insurance, legal and financial advisory, who combined have $3.24 trillion in assets under management.

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Music copyrights and royalty income streams are an increasingly popular investible asset over the past two decades as streaming income has grown and returns on music have held steady through repeated macroeconomic headwinds. In recent months, Sony Music Group and GIC, the Singapore sovereign investment fund, formed an investment partnership to acquire and market music catalog assets, mirroring earlier moves by Warner Music Group, which formed a joint venture with Bain Capital, and Universal Music Group, which invested in the catalog investment firm Chord.

These respondents expressed broad-based optimism about music as an asset class, with 86% saying they plan to increase their allocations to music rights in the next year and 66% saying they think there are more opportunities to invest in music intellectual property — like recorded music, publishing rights and royalty income streams — than last year.

“The music investment community, and interest in the music investment opportunity, has grown rapidly over the past decade; but reliable, comprehensive data on investor sentiment has been conspicuously absent,”said NMPA president and CEO, David Israelite, a backer of the report and organizer of the popular conference Music Investor Conference held in New York each June.

“Fourth Pillar’s Music Investment Barometer … findings validate what we have seen first hand at Music Investors Conference: capital conviction remains strong, deal flow is deepening, and institutional players are rallying to the platforms with a proven edge in the market,” Israelite said in a statement.

The study polled individuals mostly at the managing director level and above whose firms and banks, music publishers and labels and industry lawyers collectively completed 1,600 transactions in the prior 12 months. Roughly three quarters of respondents were based in North America, which has the world’s largest music market in the United States, with others coming from Europe, Asia, Oceania and South America.

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Claire Turvey, managing partner at Fourth Pillar, which works exclusively with clients in the music and entertainment industries, said the study is intended to track sentiment among the biggest investors in music globally, including how they navigate a market “known for its complexities.”

“Fourth Pillar’s Music Investment Barometer has been created to bring much-needed data and transparency to a market that has, to a large degree, historically operated behind closed doors,” Turvey said in a statement.

The full report is available on Fourth Pillar’s website, and below are some key takeaways.