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Music festival season is fast approaching, which means you need to start arming yourself with the proper gear to get you through.

Our pick for a product that you should have in your festival arsenal is Stanley’s new product, the Clutch Bottle, an innovative hybrid that takes form and function to heart. The bottle is equipped with a PU leather wrist strap that keeps your bottle within arm’s reach. The innovation retails for $55 and is 16oz.

If you’re looking to go hands-free, the bottle comes with a longer strap that lets you wear your hydration accessory over the shoulder or crossbody if you’re looking to switch up your look. The accompanying straps can be attached to both the top and bottom of the bottle. Just keep the bottle empty upon entry to a festival, and you should be good to carry the bottle around much like a purse with little to no effort.

The bottle itself is standard Stanley fare, made of insulating stainless steel. The bottle is not round, but rather a hexagonal shape that is easier to stow in bags or cupholders. The area you drink from is covered up with a clear tethered twist-off cap that is leakproof, great for folks prone to spilling, like myself. Obviously, we’re big fans of the pink rose quartz gloss hue; however, you’ve got more neutral tones like your standard black and cream. This bottle is dishwasher safe, which is amazing news for people who kind of hate cleaning their bottles by hand. It’s a hassle, so we don’t blame you.

If a clutch-inspired Stanley wasn’t enough, the brand also launched The Clutch Bottle Side-Kit for $45 in corresponding colors. Your bottle will go in the front bottle pouch of your side-kit, and lock down tight with the bottle securing strap to keep it from budging. The accessory also includes a zippered main pocket that can fit all your essentials like your wallet, phone, keys and even your headphones. The gear is even better for festivals since you have room for things like snacks, wristbands and sunscreen.

The Clutch Bottle Side-Kit

Buy Now at stanley $45 $45

This is a holder for Stanley’s new The Clutch Bottle. The fanny pack-esque model comes in three colors that correspond with the bottle colors.

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Beyond music festival applications, we can also envision this accompanying piece working great for runners or those looking for a hands-free way to carry their bottle while on a walk or a hike through the forest. The side-kit can be worn vertically or horizontally thanks to the adjustable shoulder strap and easy connection clips, giving you a range of styling options depending on your mood. It’s sort of like an elevated fanny pack that can carry a surprising amount.

Investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban joined Billboard at South by Southwest (SXSW) on Friday (March 13) to talk about why he’s previously said in interviews, and on episodes of the hit TV show Shark Tank, that music — along with other products like liquor brands and clothing lines — is “the death” for investors. The conversation, hosted by Kristin Robinson, was released on Wednesday (March 18) as the first-ever live episode of On the Record, Billboard’s music business podcast.

“Yeah, I think it’s the worst industry ever,” Cuban says with a laugh. “No, it’s probably tied with clothing, branded clothing…that’s the worst, and music is right behind it.” Later, the investor clarified that he was specifically referring to new music and the record labels that release it. To Cuban, older music, also known as catalog, is in a different category entirely — as is music tech.

During the wide-ranging conversation, Cuban talked about how music has become an “asset class,” how his company Cost Plus Drugs can help alleviate financial challenges for artists, why AI agents will create more artist independence and why he thinks the music industry has a lot to learn from sports about integrating prediction markets and betting.

Watch or listen to the full episode of Billboard On the Record with Mark Cuban below or here, or read an excerpt of the conversation further down the page.

You’ve said you don’t believe music is a great investment, but we are seeing a lot of players from the financial world, like KKR and Shamrock, now interested in buying catalogs, like Queen and Britney Spears. Why do you think that is?

To me, that’s not really music investing. It just happens to be music that is the vehicle for their investment. Licensing revenue for music is really consistent, but most artists really haven’t been able to get a big cash out yet, so someone like a KKR or another big investment company will just come in and say, “Okay, I’ll give you all this money [up front in exchange].” And they just see it as, you know, “Here’s my returns.” It’s almost like owning an apartment building for them.

Often, when I speak to investors who are weary about investing in new music tech companies, they say that the exception is that they wished they invested in Spotify. Spotify dominated the streaming era, and now you could argue we are moving into the AI era. Do you think that there’s going to be another opportunity for a Spotify-level AI music company to emerge?

It depends on how consumers take to AI-generated music, because if they see it as an equivalent to what an artist produces, then yes… We don’t know how people are going to respond to purely AI-generated music, but we’re seeing some of it roll up the [charts], so it isn’t that people are absolutely saying no, we just don’t know if they will truly say yes to it.

One thing that a lot of people in the music industry, especially investors in music catalogs, believe is that the music industry is recession-resistant. That music is not correlated to the overall market and will still thrive if the economy tanks. What do you think?

I think it holds up because the worse things are, the more people need music, you know? I’m a big believer that music soothes the soul and makes life livable. But at the same time, again, what is the source of that music? Is it AI or human? That’s what we don’t know.

Your career really took off during the dot-com bubble when you sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo. Do you think we are in an AI bubble right now?

I think for private companies, the economics may be a little bit rich right now, because, like back then, anybody with a website could go out there and raise a million dollars. Now, if you have any amount of decent AI technology, you could raise, in some cases, tens of millions of dollars, but back then, it was a public company bubble. Now, because it’s geared towards private companies, it’s not really a bubble by definition, because most people can’t participate.

On March 25, it will be two decades since the passing of Rocío Dúrcal, the legendary Spanish singer whose partnership with Mexican legend Juan Gabriel became one of the most successful in Latin music, producing classics like “Amor Eterno,” “El Destino,” and “Como Tu Mujer.” To honor her legacy, her first concert at Mexico City’s Auditorio Nacional, held on Nov. 22, 1991, will be screened in 200 cinemas across Latin America and Spain under the title Rocío Dúrcal, 20 Años Sin Ti (meaning “Rocío Dúrcal, 20 years without you”).

Fully remastered and presented in 4K, the concert is coming to the big screen thanks to a partnership between Sony Music Vision and Cinépolis +QUE CINE. In addition to Rocío Dúrcal’s performances, it features appearances by two pivotal figures in her career: Mexican singer-songwriter Enrique Guzmán, who shared the screen and stage with the artist during her youth and her arrival in Mexico in the ’60s, and Juan Gabriel, who revived her music career after three decades, transforming her into a ranchera icon with songs he wrote and produced.

“We believe this is the most beautiful way to remember and honor her. On YouTube, you can watch a song or two, but in this case, it’s a full concert,” says her daughter, singer Shaila Dúrcal, to Billboard Español.

A singer of many timeless hits, Dúrcal — who called herself “the most Mexican Spaniard” — continues to captivate music lovers, boasting 9.7 million monthly listeners on Spotify and countless videos created with her songs on TikTok.

“It’s true that there are many types of music nowadays, but young people also have their romantic side, and they are connecting more and more with that,” adds actress Carmen Morales, another of her daughters, regarding her mother’s ballads.

Rocío Dúrcal (real name María de los Ángeles de las Heras) was born on Oct. 4, 1944, and began her career in her native Spain as a teenager. She appeared in musical films such as Canción de Juventud, Más Bonita que Ninguna, and Amor en el Aire, which catapulted her to fame in the ’60s before partnering with Juan Gabriel in the late ’70s.

Among other accolades throughout her career, Dúrcal won the 1998 Billboard Latin Music Award for Regional Mexican Album of the Year with Juan Gabriel for Juntos Otra Vez. In 1999, she was inducted into the Billboard Latin Music Hall of Fame, and in 2007, she posthumously received the Billboard Latin Music Award for Latin Greatest Hits Album of the Year for Amor Eterno: Los Éxitos.

Rocío Dúrcal, 20 Años Sin Ti marks the beginning of a series of events to honor the singer on the 20th anniversary of her passing. A new mariachi song by Shaila Dúrcal will be released on March 25, coinciding with the premiere of the concert film in countries such as Mexico, Chile, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Meanwhile, a theater production featuring passages from her life, starring Carmen Morales, will tour Spain starting in October.

Regarding the possibility of the concert being screened for free later at Mexico City’s Zócalo — similar to Juan Gabriel’s concert recorded at the Palacio de Bellas Artes a few months ago — there was no confirmation. “For us, who carry on our mother’s legacy, it’s very exciting to do these kinds of things. We have many ideas in mind that we’re working on,” says Morales. “What we can assure you is that whatever is done will be done in a way that befits a star.”