{"id":402159,"date":"2026-04-16T20:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/402159\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T20:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:06:10","slug":"miley-cyrus-demi-lovato-hilary-duff-inside-disneys-2026-dominance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/402159\/","title":{"rendered":"Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato & Hilary Duff: Inside Disney’s 2026 Dominance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn early March, Hilary Duff appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, teaching the host the widely memed and now-viral choreography to her 2007 hit \u201cWith Love.\u201d The bouncy pop track served as the second single off her album Dignity, which would be the former Lizzie McGuire star\u2019s final release on the Disney<\/a>-owned Hollywood Records, which helped distribute an entire class of pop superstars.<\/p>\n

\n\tA few weeks later, another Disney icon was making headlines: Miley Cyrus had reembraced Hannah Montana (even cutting her bangs and going blonde, with the help of some clip-ins) to celebrate the show\u2019s 20th anniversary. To commemorate the titular role that ultimately launched Cyrus into superstardom, she co-produced an hourlong Disney+ special, threw a Hollywood premiere party and released a new, reflective song, \u201cYounger You,\u201d that was released not by current label Columbia but by first musical home Hollywood Records.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing the special\u2019s premiere, Hannah Montana\u2019s catalog had a 306% streaming gain (to 18.8\u00a0million official on-demand U.S. streams in the seven-day period after the special hit Hulu and Disney+, compared with the 4.6\u00a0million streams in the seven-day period before), according to Luminate. Meanwhile, \u201cYounger You\u201d debuted with 1.1\u00a0million official on-demand streams on its first day of release (March\u00a027).<\/p>\n

\n\tDisney Music Group president Ken Bunt says \u201cit\u2019s really been the last few years\u201d that he\u2019s noticed the eagerness of Disney\u2019s veteran class of pop stars to revisit their start, after they moved to new label homes for mature projects. \u201cReally, I think it started to coalesce last year with the Jonas Brothers tour. And then, of course, we have the catalog, so we\u2019ve been working with Hilary\u2019s team well before [her new album and tour] was announced. They came to us saying, \u2018Hey, can we work together?\u2019 Aly\u00a0&\u00a0AJ\u2019s team [also] reached out. Everybody\u2019s touring right now\u00a0\u2026 So it became evident.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn June, Duff will embark on her first global headlining tour in nearly two decades \u2014 which includes dates at Madison Square Garden in New York and the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. A small run of intimate shows in January previewed that her early hits would be just as essential to the setlist as her new album, luck\u2026 or something, which debuted at No.\u00a03 on the Billboard\u00a0200<\/a> in March. (She even closed the shows with her signature Lizzie McGuire Movie soundtrack standout, \u201cWhat Dreams Are Made Of,\u201d and in April released \u201cCome Clean [Mine],\u201d a new recording of her 2004 single.)<\/p>\n

\n\tDemi Lovato, who starred in Camp Rock (and its sequel) and released six albums on Hollywood Records, is also hitting the road this year, embarking on the It\u2019s Not That Deep tour following her October 2025 album of the same name, which debuted at No.\u00a09 on the Billboard\u00a0200. And this summer, Camp Rock\u00a03 will arrive, which Lovato is co-\u00adexecutive producing (alongside former co-stars\/co-producers the Jonas Brothers). Selena Gomez is also stepping behind the camera, making her directorial debut in the coming months with the season three premiere of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place (this season will be its last).<\/p>\n

\n\tBunt is especially proud that as this class has matured both personally and professionally, Disney can still be considered home \u2014 a place to not only return to for nostalgia but also a safe launchpad to try something new. He mentions Cyrus\u2019 Avatar: Fire and Ash end-credits song, \u201cDream as One,\u201d or the fact that Gomez is a producer on Hulu\u2019s Only Murders in the Building, in which she also stars (both are Disney properties). He even teases that Duff has \u201cbeen doing more with the company\u201d that could be \u201ccoming out soon\u201d \u2014 and has also been discussing the idea of getting \u201call [those original stars] on screen\u00a0\u2026 to have them tell their story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Cyrus\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCyrus<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSer Baffo\/Disney<\/p>\n

\n\tIt all points to another achievement that Bunt is proud of: how Disney Music Group has grown as well. \u201cAfter all these years, I feel like there\u2019s a way for talent to mature with the company,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the past, we didn\u2019t really have that. We were very focused on tween.\u201d He cites Disney stars Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo as well for connecting some dots, noting that Rodrigo \u201cis one of the few\u201d who wrote a song for a Disney series in which she also starred (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series).<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s not to say the company\u2019s focus has shifted away from its key demographic. Rather, at the same time that this veteran class is embracing Disney\u2019s new millennium heyday, Bunt is predicting that another class of superstars is currently developing across various Disney franchises, including The Descendants, Zombies and Camp Rock\u00a03 \u2014 the casts of which are joining forces for a world tour this September. Meanwhile, after performing on 2025\u2019s joint franchise tour, Kylie Cantrall of Descendants fame just signed with Republic Records, while Hollywood Records breakout Freya Skye released her debut EP, Stardust, in February, with single \u201cSilent Treatment\u201d becoming her first entry on the Billboard Hot\u00a0100<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Bunt is excited about the \u201cvery talented\u201d new era of Disney stars across music, movies and TV, he still sees the late-2000s class as singular. \u201cThis class is just unique in music history,\u201d says Bunt, who has worked at Disney for 28 years and got his start on the video promotion and digital marketing teams as most of these stars were launching. \u201cTo have this level of talent still resonate culturally 20 years later, I can\u2019t think of another class that\u2019s really been like this from a historical standpoint. And to me, the thread that goes through all of them is yes, they\u2019re talented, but they all have an incredible work ethic. They\u2019ve really worked at their craft over all those years to still continue to have success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appears in the April 18, 2026, issue of Billboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In early March, Hilary Duff appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, teaching the host the widely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[9618,93,821,61,60,709,278,4609],"class_list":{"0":"post-402159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-disney","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-genre-pop","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-magazine","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-tv-film"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}