Two powerful hedge funds are vying to buy Reservoir Media, the publicly traded independent music publishing and recorded music business founded and led by Golnar Khosrowshahi, according to a press release from Reservoir on Wednesday.

Reservoir said investors Richmond Hill Investment and Wesbild put in an unsolicited joint offer to acquire all outstanding shares at a price of $10.50 per share. Richmond and Wesbild’s offer follows an earlier unsolicited bid from another shareholder, Irenic Capital Management, to acquire all of Reservoir’s outstanding shares at a price of between $10.00 and $11.00 per share in cash, as reported by Bloomberg last week.

Reservoir said it formed a special committee of “independent and disinterested” board directors to evaluate the two offers and other routes the company could take to “determine the course of action that is in the best interests of the company and all of its shareholders.”

“There is no assurance that any definitive offer will be made, that any agreement will be executed or that the transaction proposed … will be approved or completed,” Reservoir stated in the press release, adding that the company will decline to comment “unless and until it deems further disclosure is appropriate or required.”

Reservoir ranked No. 9 among the top 10 publishers who held stakes in songs that ranked on Billboard‘s Top Radio Airplay Chart for the second half of 2025, with a 1.19% market share. Reservoir’s publishing roster includes artists with evergreen popularity, including Snoop Dogg, k.d. lang and Kings of Leon, and it holds stakes in hits like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” which was co-written by Reservoir songwriter Steph Jones.

Reservoir’s recent acquisitions have reflected the company’s focus on expanding overseas and finding new opportunities for its intellectual property, while also bolstering its U.S. repertoire. Last September, it acquired the publishing rights and recorded-­music royalties of late jazz great Miles Davis. It also launched an Indian subsidiary, PopIndia, and its first full catalog acquisition, Musicraft Entertainment.

Last July, Reservoir invested in London-based entertainment company Lightroom, to collaborate on the development of immersive entertainment experiences around Reservoir’s evergreen music catalog. Lightroom’s shows like Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs featured a score by Hans Zimmer, who composed other music (The Lion King, Gladiator) in Reservoir’s catalog, and have attracted more than a million visitors, according to a press release from July 2025 when the deal was announced.

Lily Allen is keeping receipts — literally. In clips circulating online from the singer’s tour supporting album West End Girl, which kicked off March 2 in Glasgow, Scotland, she wraps herself in a dress made of fabric seemingly printed with purchases estranged husband David Harbor made for other women during their marriage, if her lyrics are to be believed.

The moment in the show comes as Allen performs “4chan Stan,” one of the most searing songs on the LP. While singing the track — the lyrics of which include “Never been in Bergdorf’s/ But you took someone shopping there” and detail how she went through her ex’s bedside table and came across the receipt for the luxury store among other suspicious transactions — the British artist walks over to a prop nightstand and pulls out a long train of fabric, wrapping it around her body.

Along with lyrics from West End Girl and a receipt from none other than Bergdorf Goodman, the dress also shows a lengthy tequila bar tab and bills from other establishments. (The singer also shared a photo of her dress in an Instagram carousel of snaps from the first night of her tour.)

Billboard has reached out to Allen’s rep about the dress, as well as Harbour’s rep for comment.

Allen and the Stranger Things star wed in 2020, staying married for four years before news of their separation reached the public in February 2025. Since then, the musician has been open about how her mental health has suffered amid the split, and in October, she unleashed West End Girl, an album breaking down the crumbling of a marriage in unflinchingly straightforward terms. Lyrics on songs such as “Pussy Palace” and “Madeline” imply that Harbour pressured Allen into having an open relationship after she moved to London to star in a West End production before allegedly breaking their agreed-upon terms of the arrangement.

“It’s viscerally like going through the motions,” Allen said of West End Girl in an October conversation with Interview Magazine. “At the time, I was really trying to process things, and that’s great in terms of the album, but I don’t feel confused or angry now. I don’t need revenge.”

Harbour has stayed out of the West End Girl discourse. Allen has tour dates scheduled in Europe and North America through the beginning of July, and in October, she’ll embark on a run through New Zealand and Australia.

Los Angeles-based independent musician Jesse Barrera had just bought a house and had his first child when he sat down to write “No Reservations.” It was February 2023 when Barrera released the neo-soul song and video he filmed on his iPhone to YouTube. Within a matter of months, the song became Barrera’s best-performing track on YouTube, accumulating more than 4.3 million views as of February 2026.

The track’s success caught catalog investors’ attention, including Duetti, whom Barrera had dealt with before. A year earlier, the music rights company, which buys master and publishing rights to individual songs by independent artists, bought a stake in his cover of Shania Twain’s “Still the One.” Barrera said that deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, paid for several of his music videos. That led him to sell Duetti his masters for “No Reservations” and use the proceeds to fund his 2025 album, Gentle Noise. 

“The timing was perfect because it aligned with the recording of my full-length record,” Barrera says. “For what I’m trying to do, trying to accomplish and keep going as an artist, it makes sense to me.” 

Founded in 2022, Duetti has acquired thousands of songs like these for sums ranging from a few thousand to a few million dollars, and it is growing at a pace of around 80 songs and catalogs a month. With $100 million in backing from equity investors The Raine Group, Flexpoint Ford, Nyca Partners, Viola Ventures and Roc Nation and $205 million from two asset-backed securities, plus additional credit, Duetti and its investors are betting big on the future value of music’s long tail. 

Their strategy is three-pronged. Like any music catalog company, Duetti grows through acquisitions. But because it is acquiring what most investors still consider to be riskier music assets — songs by lesser-known artists released as recently as two years ago — Duetti has invested heavily in data engineering and forecasting so it can value songs and project future growth in-house, Duetti co-founder and CEO Lior Tibon says. That tech platform helps the firm acquire the most promising songs at scale cost-efficiently, he adds, and once acquired it is also used to improve management and royalty collections. Meanwhile, marketing staff work to increase streaming activity with slowed-down and sped-up versions of songs and remixes, which are placed on Duetti’s 3,000 actively managed playlists and pitched to influencers and digital service providers. 

“We are a company that really specializes in understanding the value — financial and otherwise — of catalogs and knows how to take them to the next level,” Tibon says. “It’s not about just financially aggregating rights. It’s about really managing and taking care — through marketing, collections — of music rights and making sure that they survive in this world where there’s so much new music coming out every day.”

Duetti has published a flurry of recent reports to burnish its credentials as a resource for reliable data on indie music catalog economics. In January, with support from Billboard, the company launched its Music Finance Index, a twice-annual poll about the state of music catalog valuations and investor sentiment from the perspective of independent artists, managers and lawyers in Duetti’s orbit. In February, Duetti published its 2025 Music Economics Report, with findings on how artists who earn between $100 and $350,000 a year from streaming music can build catalogs that generate durable revenue, which they consider to be a catalog that experiences less than a 10% decay in streaming activity in a year. 

The report found that songs that go viral may earn more money in the first three months than songs that grow more slowly, but within six to nine months both assets end up generating close to the same amount. It also guided artists to release electronic and hip-hop songs in the spring, alternative tracks in the summer and Christian and country songs in the winter for the greatest success. Artists who release at least three tracks a year had 18% higher revenue on average per track in the first year post-release, the report found. The report emphasized that for artists just getting started, two consecutive months of growth on YouTube is more correlated to catalog durability than similar periods of growth experienced on other streaming platforms.

As a startup, Duetti has raised $635 million, mostly in the form of debt. More than $200 million of that debt has come from two asset-backed securities; these notes sold to institutional investors, such as insurance companies, give Duetti access to money at an interest rate much lower than it would receive from a bank on a more conventional line of credit. For example, the U.S. Small Business Administration, which offers among the lowest interest rate loans on the market, charged between 11.75% and 14.75% on its loans in February. In contrast, Concord, which has raised more than $3 billion from ABS issuances, pays an interest rate of less than 6%, CEO Bob Valentine has said.

However, most music securitizations, such as Concord’s, were backed by hit songs from famous artists that are decades old and therefore have shown steady rates of return. Duetti was the first catalog company to issue an ABS backed by newer songs. The money raised from its ABS reflects the value of the songs backing it, but like any other type of this securitization, if the underlying songs lose value over the coming years, the company could face a capital call. That hasn’t happened to Duetti or any music company.

When he has spoken with debt investors, Tibon says he always points out how many individual listeners and streams a song must have to generate $10,000. Compared with other assets like auto loans that get securitized and sold on the debt markets regularly, that theoretical song provides millions more data points to evaluate.

“Maybe it’s easier to get comfortable with the value of a Bruce Springsteen catalog,” Tibon says. “But we’ve proven twice that we can do a securitization, that the catalog is worth what we think it’s worth, and that we are stable and continue to grow.”

Eric Nam is no stranger to facing the heat after his run on the recently wrapped season four of Peacock‘s hit show The Traitors, so it’s no surprise that for Billboard‘s latest episode of Takes Us Out, the singer-actor selected teppanyaki restaurant Shogun in Pasadena, Calif., where the fiery metal cooktop is just as scorching as the flames at the Fire of Truth.

It’s also where the K-pop artist — who released new song “How the Fire Started” and its Traitors cast-filled music video March 3 — decided to share some of his secrets with Billboard‘s Tetris Kelly.

“I initially had said no to doing Traitors a few times,” reveals Nam, who grew up in Atlanta. “I was very hesitant because it’s reality TV in the U.S., which is also very different from reality TV in Korea, and I just didn’t know how it would play out. But I thought it would be a great way for me to introduce myself to a bigger population of the United States and to hopefully introduce them to my music. That was the big bold decision I took.”

The artist calls filming the Emmy-winning show “insane” and “psychologically a lot,” but despite the challenges, there were some big positives. “I walked away with a lot of new friends,” he shares, before teasing that he could perhaps play better if offered another shot, giving The Traitors‘ producers a nudge. “Maybe next time, I’ll get [the Faithfuls]! I’ll get ’em all! … I hope it’s for All Stars!”

Some of those new friends — Faithfuls Maura Higgins, Natalie Anderson, Ron Funches and Yam Yam Arocho — starred in his video for “How the Fire Started,” a country-tinged revenge song of sorts that could also apply to The Traitors victor Rob Rausch, who appeared in the humorous visual as well.

“I’ve been stabbed in the back a lot, and I realized there are a lot of people in my life … who were in my life, who saw me and what I was or whatever as an opportunity more than as a person or as a friend,” the singer, who was dinged by contestant Michael Rappaport for his “magic ears” after misidentifying a Traitor’s laugh, shares of his new song. While Nam was talking about his life, it also applicable to the competition show’s finale, during which Rausch — who had recruited Nam to be a Traitor — betrayed the musician’s trust and banished him during the Fire of Truth alongside Higgins to ultimately take the nearly $221,000 prize for himself. “I think I’ve been through some really really crazy relationships whether that’s romantic or platonic … Sadly, sometimes it just doesn’t end great.”

“It was one of the scariest things I put together,” the singer-actor admits of the music video fro “How the Fire Started,” which is also the first single for a new album he hopes to release this summer. “I have a hard time asking for favors and asking, ‘Do you mind doing this?’ But everybody was so down and so excited, and they were incredible! We had a good time! For us, I think it was a way to just kind of wrap up the entire experience in a way that twas fun and cheeky and still pulled the music in, which was my biggest hope.”

Watch Eric Nam’s full episode of Takes Us Out above, during which he dishes on whether he ever suspected Rausch, what fans would find most surprising from behind the scenes of The Traitors, tests his “magic ears” by trying to identify Billboard Hot 100 songs and much more!

Britney Spears‘ rep has spoken out after the star was arrested for suspicion of a DUI on Wednesday (March 4), telling Billboard in a statement Thursday that the star is going to be making some serious changes in her life with support from her family.

Of the arrest that took place 9:28 p.m. PT in Ventura County, Calif., Spears’ rep said, “This was an unfortunate incident that is completely inexcusable.”

“Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law, and hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life,” the statement continued. “Hopefully, she can get the help and support she needs during this difficult time.”

“Her boys are going to be spending time with her,” it concluded, referencing Spears’ sons Sean and Jayden, whom she shares with ex-husband Kevin Federline. “Her loved ones are going to come up with an overdue needed plan to set her up for success for well being.”

The statement comes shortly after Billboard confirmed that Spears had been taken into custody, with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office booking her early Thursday morning before releasing her around 6:07 a.m. PT. She will head to court on May 4.

The pop icon previously faced legal issues in 2007, when she turned herself in for a hit-and-run and driving without a valid license after steering her car into a parked vehicle in Los Angeles. The case was later dismissed, but not before she was placed under a legal conservatorship in 2008 that would last for the next 13 years.

The statement from Spears’ rep echoes what her ex-husband said in his October memoir, You Thought You Knew, in which Federline warned “The truth is, this situation with Britney feels like it’s racing toward something irreversible.”

“It’s become impossible to pretend everything’s OK,” he also wrote of his famous ex-wife’s well-being. “Something bad is going to happen if things don’t change, and my biggest fear is that our sons will be left holding the pieces.”

Spears, however, slammed the memoir, saying at the time, “The constant gaslighting from ex-husband is extremely hurtful and exhausting.”