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If you’re thinking about joining Disney+, a free trial is the best way to test out a streaming platform to see if it’s a good fit. However, Disney+ doesn’t offer a free trial anymore, but we found a clever workaround to watch movies and TV shows for free.

You can get Disney+ for free, if you sign up for DirecTV or Hulu + Live TV. Both services offer free trials for up to five days of use.

These days, there are a number of live TV streaming platforms that include Disney+, as well as other channels that’ll get you access to hit movies, TV shows and documentaries from The Walt Disney Company, Marvel Studios, Pixar Animation, Lucasfilm, Twentieth Century Studios, Hulu, National Geographic and much more online at home.

The streaming service also has a wide selection of music specials and concert films, such as Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version), Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium, The Beatles: Get Back, Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All and others.

The streaming platforms below include promos and free trials that’ll help save you additional money while allowing you to watch Disney+ online for free.

DirecTV is offering a five-day free trial, which will let you watch Disney+ for free. Access to the streaming app comes with all of its signature packages, which include unlimited DVR storage. In addition, you’ll get access to local channels and the ability to stream on up to three devices at the same time.

Right now, you can sign up starting at $59.99 for the first month of service ($89.99 per month afterward) for DirecTV’s “Entertainment” Signature Package.

With a three-day free trial, Hulu + Live TV gives you access to Disney+, in addition to more than 100 live TV channels for $89.99 per month. And, you can expand your content library by bundling Hulu + Live TV with Hulu and ESPN Unlimited too.

About Disney+

Disney+ plans start at $7.99 per month for the ad-supported plan, while you can go ad free for $13.99 per month. For even more content, Disney+ offers a bundle with Disney+ and Hulu, which starts at $9.99 per month. You can add ESPN Unlimited to Disney+ and Hulu starting at $35.99 per month.

Meanwhile, if you’re not into ESPN Unlimited, you can add HBO Max to Disney+ and Hulu instead with prices starting at $19.99 per month.

When Cole Swindell reached the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts in 2016 with “You Should be Here,” the title arguably became the biggest hit of his career.

He’s had others that reigned for more than one week on each of those lists, but “You Should be There” – with four weeks atop Hot Country Songs and three weeks in the lead on Country Airplay – is the only title to spend multiple weeks at No. 1 on both. Additionally, it was the first of three Swindell singles certified triple-platinum by the RIAA.

“You Should be Here” helped Swindell accept the death of his father, Bill Swindell.

“Hearing that other people needed to hear that as much as I needed to write it,” Cole says, “that’s kind of when I knew that, ‘Hey, this is just part of my story. There’s nothing you can do about it.’”

Ten years later, there’s a sequel. “Girl Dad” documents the major changes in Cole’s personal life as he checks in with his father; even though Bill isn’t present in the physical world, “Girl Dad” assumes Bill’s soul is able to witness his son’s forward motion, and to recognize his own role in it.

“In 10 years, a lot of good things can happen,” Cole suggests. “Even though you’ve been through [some tough] things, you can use those to help other people, and I don’t think I would have been the person I was without going through that.”

Cole has forged a level of professional success that his father never got to see, but he also married the former Courtney Little in California in 2024, and the couple welcomed a daughter, Rainey, last August. Around the beginning of the year, Cole hit the links, and while he was alone on the golf cart, he contemplated his status as a girl dad. Was there a song in that? He thought about how he might tell his father of the changes in his life, and the idea coalesced around the use of a comma. “I met a girl, Dad” would work as the starting point of a chorus; “We’re having a girl, Dad” would clinch it.

Cole had written a number of songs with Michael Tyler (“Somewhere on a Beach,” “Mind on You”) and Ben Stennis (“’Til You Can’t,” “Holy Smokes”), and he felt they would be the right collaborators to finish “Girl Dad.” He texted Tyler, who needed to hear the whole pitch before he was on board.

“I see the words ‘Girl Dad,’ and I’m just thinking, you know, ‘Maybe not a hit song,’” Tyler admits.

But once Swindell shared the actual lines he had in mind for the chorus, Tyler was completely in on it. They wrote it on Jan. 7 at Stennis’ Young Guns Publishing office on Nashville’s Music Row. Swindell knew parts of their personal biographies, but it became even clearer when they were together that they were the right collaborators: Stennis was a girl dad who’d lost his father; Tyler’s dad had passed, and his wife was expecting a girl.

Their first attempts on guitar fell flat, but Stennis turned on his virtual keyboard, using an Emotional Piano program that simulates a baby grand, and they found some chords that fit. Tyler hopped on for a bit and created a repetitive, descending pattern. It set the tone for the rest of the process.

Swindell sang the first line, “I hate the sound of my boots on this gravel,” and they were on their way. Tyler kicked in a phrase about “that dash in between those years” – a reference to a headstone – and they vacillated a bit between the first verse and chorus, making sure to place some of the most important information in the spots where it would have the most impact.

“Knowing the beginning and the end of the chorus really helped a ton,” Stennis says. “All we did was fill in the gaps of Cole’s story, and then try to make it something that a lot of people could latch onto – personal, but not so personal that other people couldn’t tell their story within the song as well.”

The first verse laid out the cemetery setting for the conversation, while the chorus recounted Cole’s marriage and produced a sonogram that confirms the pregnancy.

Verse two would do much of the heavy lifting while maintaining a light tone: Dad brags about his granddaughter in Heaven, her due date is the same month as Grandpa’s birthday, and it ends by comparing the day Cole met his wife to his parents’ introduction. It’s three generations of life compressed into four lines, efficiently making connections that cement the song’s intimacy.

“It should have been complicated, but I think that’s why we felt like we had something special that day, because it flowed out so freely and so fast,” Stennis says. “Those are the days where you know you’re just a conduit. You know that someone else is doing the heavy lifting for you.”

The process was extremely emotional – “A lot of it was venting and grown-man tears,” Tyler notes – and it culminated with a two-line bridge that expressed the ultimate regret: that little Rainey will never know the grandfather who had played such a crucial role in shaping her father’s life. “All I can do is kind of make sure she knows who my dad was through who I am,” Cole says.

Stennis recorded Swindell’s vocal on a Shure SM7 microphone right there in the room. “I do remember saying to Cole, ‘How are you gonna sing this live?’” Tyler recalls. “He’s like, ‘I don’t know. I’ll worry about it when I get there.’”

Stennis hired Blake Bollinger to replay the piano, then added a few light touches to fill out the demo. Swindell, who thought it was likely too personal to be released, introduced “Girl Dad” to Warner Records Nashville in an off-the-cuff manner during a meeting. He was shocked at the reaction.

“There were people, legit, streaming tears down their face for just the demo,” Swindell says.

Finalizing it became a priority. Swindell enlisted producer Sam Ellis (Ingrid Andress, Hunter Hayes), who thought “Girl Dad” was “incredible.” He felt similarly about Swindell’s demo vocal. “You just can’t beat it emotionally,” Ellis says. “[He’s] a little unsure and just learning it for the first time. There’s some real vulnerability.”

Ellis replayed Bollinger’s core piano parts and filled it out further with an array of mostly acoustic instruments. He mixed real drums with programmed percussion, intentionally creating a “heartbeat” vibe, and unintentionally building an other-worldly sensibility to it. That spiritual tone was further enhanced with a spacey introductory electronic keyboard, plus the phrasing in the chorus, which feels almost like a mantra.

During the last half of the production process, Ellis hired steel guitarist Justin Schipper, and got more in that vein. “Justin Schipper’s great at adding those ethereal, tension steel guitar parts, things that don’t really stand out as traditional steel lines,” Ellis says. “He’s one of a kind for doing that.”

Warner Records Nashville released the single – and an emotional video, with Swindell’s boots crushing the gravel at his father’s cemetery – on June 19. It’s at No. 48 on the Country Airplay chart dated Aug. 1, connecting with fans whose stories are similar to his, and with some who have no firsthand experience with the scenario.

“These kinds of songs are why I love country music,” he says. “When you have a story and you can share it like that, and other people connect with it, there’s not anything more powerful than that.”

Between sips of the same mate, Milo J and Trueno made a clear case that Latin music’s global reach doesn’t come from watering down local identity, but from leaning into it. During a panel at LAMC (Latin Alternative Music Conference) on Thursday (July 30), moderated by Billboard‘s co-chief content officer Leila Cobo, the Argentine artists agreed that their connection with audiences at home and abroad has come from making music rooted in their truth, their neighborhoods and their language.

“The best thing we could do was make music with our identity,” Milo J said, sharing that he never built his sound around trying to “blow up” or come off more universal. Trueno pushed the idea even further: “The world listening to us is a consequence.”

That idea ran through much of the conversation, as both artists spoke about how soccer culture, a sense of belonging and neighborhood life shape not just their lyrics, but the way they understand the world. “In my country, soccer isn’t just soccer — it’s life itself,” Milo J said. Trueno, for his part, described soccer as “a feeling of identity,” helping explain why both artists have built such distinctly Argentine worlds without losing international resonance.

Beyond the conversation around identity, the panel also offered several reflections on craft. Both artists said building a lasting career depends less on following formulas than on protecting your own voice. Trueno urged emerging artists to be “as much yourself as possible,” stressing that the audience that stays is the one that connects with something real. Milo J emphasized the importance of building community early on by surrounding yourself with friends, creatives and collaborators who grow alongside you.

There was also room to talk about the less glamorous side of the business. Both Milo and Trueno acknowledged that, over time, they’ve had to learn about contracts, teams and legal protection — the part of the journey that often gets overlooked when a project takes off fast. On that front, both emphasized the importance of having trustworthy people around them, from family members to lawyers and close collaborators.

In one of the panel’s most talked-about moments, the two also struck a cautious tone on the use of artificial intelligence in music. While they acknowledged it can be helpful as a support tool for demos or references, they agreed it can’t replace the weight of human experience. For Trueno, art remains “irreplaceable,” while Milo J defended the value of process: learning, trying, messing up and building a body of work from scratch.

The two artists have previously teamed up on tracks including “Gil” (2025). This week, Trueno shares a Billboard cover story with Bella Kay and Slayyyter. Milo J continues to stand out with his album La Vida Era Más Corta (2025), while Trueno keeps building momentum with his recent LP TURR4ZO (2026).

LAMC runs through Saturday (Aug. 1) with more panels, showcases and concerts, including its SummerStage closing event in Manhattan’s Central Park on Saturday where both artists will perform.