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:

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.

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 Okeechobee founder Julio Santa Domingo, 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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Young Miko has teamed up with Gap for its first-ever Spanish-language video campaign, Billboard can exclusively announce Tuesday (March 10).

The Puerto Rican rapper — known for her smooth flow over trap and hip-hop beats — joins a star-studded lineup of past Gap collaborators like Madonna, Missy Elliott, Lenny Kravitz and Leon Bridges. “When Gap reached out, it was a no-brainer to me,” Young Miko tells Billboard Español. “I have a lot of pretty memories from when I was little wearing Gap pieces.”

For the campaign, the artist born María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano Cardona revisits her Billboard-charting hit “Wassup,” cleverly renamed “Sweats Like Us,” in a new promotional music video. That song gave Young Miko her first top 10 on the Hot Latin Rhythm Songs chart, peaking at No. 9, while reaching No. 31 on Hot Latin Songs last May. “That song already held a lot of emotional power for me,” she explains. The collaboration also marks a milestone for Gap, as it’s the first time the company has used a Spanish-language song in one of its campaigns.

“Gap has a long history of partnering with artists who shape culture — not just through their work, but through the way they connect with audiences,” said president and CEO of Gap brand, Mark Breitbard, in a statement. “Young Miko speaks to a generation and is shaping what comes next. As a true creative collaborator on this campaign, she helped us create a visual extension of her music while positioning GapSweats as a canvas for creativity and self-expression.”

Fabiola Torres, chief marketing officer of Gap brand, added, “Young Miko brings authenticity, confidence, and a real connection to style and self-expression. With this campaign, we’re meeting audiences where culture is happening now through music, movement, and storytelling.”

The campaign mirrors Young Miko’s laid-back, swaggy personal style, featuring cozy and stylish sweats that align with her studio wardrobe. For the Puerto Rican rapper, the collaboration also carries deeper significance, reflecting the importance of representing Latin culture in such a visible and empowering way, she notes.

Directed by Bethany Vargas and shot by Olivia Malone, the three-minute music video showcases choreography by Zoi Tatopoulos and features 26 dancers.

Check out the “Sweats Like Us” music video below, and further down, read the full interview, where Young Miko also shares her experience appearing at Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Casita and more.

What inspired you to team up with Gap?

When Gap reached out, it was a no-brainer to me. I have a lot of pretty memories from when I’m little wearing Gap pieces. Gap has always had such iconic campaigns. To this day, they’re still so relevant. They’ve always been so unique and stood out with good causes and amazing collaborations. I thought, my name up there with all these other amazing people that have collaborated with Gap would be like the coolest thing. I showed my mom las fotos and the video, and she was like, “You used to watch these on TV, now you have your own.” We have a hoodie. It was just like a nice way to connect with things that were very present in my childhood. And nowadays, with all these tough situations that are going on in the U.S. and in the world, I thought a Latin campaign would go a very long way.

How does the campaign reflect your personal style and vibe?

It reflects it a lot more than I thought it would. I spend most of my day in sweats. In the studio, I go in sweats — studios are usually very cold, and I get cold all the time. Yo vivo en el trópico, así que estoy acostumbrada al calor (I live in the tropics, so I’m used to the heat). Anytime I know I’m going somewhere cold, I need my sweats. Plus, they look so swaggy. I thought the campaign was living in a similar world as to the Wassup” video; it looks like we just dived a little deeper into that music video, but this time with Gap’s take on it. We have this awesome scene where all the dancers are dressed in black, myself included. When I was like doing these scenes, I was this is almost in the same world as [my album] Do Not Disturb. Everything I try to do in life is with an intention; nothing is made at random.

How was it like to reimagine “Wassup”?

It was very curious to me. It was like giving my baby to somebody else. “Haz lo que tu quieras con esta pieza” (do what you will with this track) and hopefully we’ll all like it. That song already held a lot of emotional power for me. Before that song came out, a whole year went by where I didn’t drop anything. When I created it, I immediately knew it was the one track I was going to come out of hiding with.

When Gap reached out, they told us that it was the song [they were going with], and that this is the first time they’re using a [Spanish-language] song of the artist in the campaign, and it’s all in Spanish! It just comes to prove that trusting your gut feeling is always more powerful than anything else.

Español is having a lot more visibility and acceptance nationwide. We saw you at La Casita for Bad Bunny’s megastar-cementing halftime show. What does it mean to share such a huge cultural milestone with artists representing Puerto Rico and Latin culture.

It’s the most amazing thing. I said [earlier], por los momentos que estamos viviendo ahora mismo, the one thing we need the most right now is hope and love, and to lock in with each other; to really be a community right now. It’s up to us to be able to make that world — or, at least, try to make the world a safer and better place. To open spaces where we feel welcome. Like Benito said himself [at his Grammy award acceptance speech], “We’re all humans, we’re not animals, we’re not savages, we’re not different to anybody else around us.” Visibility right now is like an opportunity; to give more representation. And you better believe I’m gonna be front row and center. Being able to just to be alive in this moment and watch the Super Bowl and watch Benito up there just like killing it… and Ricky Martin! And then Lady Gaga, who is such a powerful ally, and was just like, “I’m going to be a part of this with them.”

When we got invited to [be at] La Casita, the one rule they gave us was, just get in there and dance. Have fun. Tienen que perrear, bailar y sonreír (To twerk, to dance, to smile). That’s the one thing they asked of us. I’m also very thankful to Benito’s team that reached out and thought about us to be a part of it.

What do you want your fans to feel when they watch “Sweats Like This”?

I want them to know that this was another world I have dived into having the most fun, and for people to enjoy it and continue to get to know me more. For them to know that that I don’t do anything if it’s not out of love and a good place.