The Kansas City Chiefs’ disappointing loss at the 2025 Super Bowl is one that fans of the team — including Taylor Swift and MGK — will remember all too well.

Both musicians were present at the big game against the Philadelphia Eagles in February, with the pop star there to support boyfriend Travis Kelce and the former rapper on site to cheer on Kansas City before performing at the team’s afterparty later that night. But while hopes that the Chiefs could snag a “three-peat” Super Bowl win were high at the beginning of the game, they quickly faltered as the Eagles kept scoring to win 40-22 — something MGK reflected on talking to Swift about that day in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday (Aug. 6).

“I was in Travis’ suite, and at the beginning of it, Taylor was like, ‘Hell yeah, we’re gonna come watch you perform, it’s gonna be crazy tonight,’” the musician began. “Internally, I was stoked. I was like, ‘Oh what a legendary night this is gonna be.’”

“By the third quarter, dude, I was looking at that score,” he continued, laughing at the memory. “I went up to Taylor, I was like, ‘Y’all aren’t coming tonight, huh?’ She was like, ‘I don’t think so, man. I’ll see if I can get [Travis] to get out, but I don’t think [so].’”

MGK still had to perform at the losing team’s post-game party in New Orleans that night — a gig he does not recommend to other artists. “Don’t ever sign yourself up for that,” he said before joking, “Wait to sign the paper ’til third quarter or something, ’til it looks like it’s going one way or the other.”

But while the afterparty was a little bit grim, MGK will always support Kelce — a fellow Ohioan — and the rest of the Chiefs. “That’s my dawg,” the artist added of the athlete. “He’s from Cleveland. He’s from right next to where I’m from.”

Shortly after the interview, MGK went on to release his new album, Lost Americana, on Friday (Aug. 8). With none other than Bob Dylan in his corner during the rollout, his rootsy new project marks a shift away from the hip-hop and pop-punk genres he previously experimented with.

As for the Chiefs, Kelce and his teammates have been hard at work training for the upcoming season, which kicks off in early September. And after becoming a mainstay at Arrowhead Stadium throughout the past two NFL seasons after beginning her romance with the tight end in 2023, Swift is expected to appear at even more games this year now that she’s finished her global Eras Tour.

Watch MGK recall his conversation with Swift at the Super Bowl below.

On July 28, Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams released a new hair dye color through her Good Dye Young brand, allowing 2,000 fans to snap up the limited run of new product. But when they did, they were met with something unexpected: a code, which they were encouraged to share, that unlocked 17 new singles uploaded to Williams’ website, scattered at random across the page. Two days later, the songs disappeared — only for them to then be uploaded to streaming services — not as a full collected album, but as 17 individual singles, all packaged separately with their own artwork.

The collection of songs — which fans have been referring to as Ego, after the name of the hair dye color — represents Williams’ first solo work since 2021, and fans have been having fun with it, making their own playlists and mixing up the tracklists, creating their own artwork, and more, with Williams inviting those fans into the creative process alongside her. The somewhat confusing release strategy was fully intentional, driving fan, press and industry interest for Williams’ first release as an independent artist after leaving Atlantic Records — and it helps earn her co-manager Leah Hodgkiss the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.

Hodgkiss, who manages Williams as well as Paramore alongside co-manager Mark Mercado and also works with Rico Nasty and The Linda Lindas, was heavily involved in the marketing rollout, as well as the creation of her indie venture — aptly titled Post Atlantic — which is being distributed by Secretly. Here, she discusses the creative behind the rollout, the intentional decision not to label or package the singles as an album, and why fans were so central to the campaign from the start. “You have to know who you’re marketing to,” Hodgkiss says. “If you’re just doing things that have never been done before, but you don’t know why you’re doing them, or who you’re doing them for, none of it’s going to connect.”

This week, Hayley Williams released a collection of 17 songs, first through an access code on her website, then on streaming services, each of them individually labeled instead of packaged as an album. What was the idea behind going that route? 

It’s a tough question to answer, as there were so many ideas. But what we kept coming back to is that we wanted to make music tangible again. Right now, it all feels so passive, for better or for worse. There are so many incredibly curated playlists on Spotify, Apple, what have you, that it’s so easy to open your chosen DSP and click shuffle and not even pay attention to what you’re listening to. 

We started with trying to answer that question: How do we make music an experience again? How do we force people to interact with the music beyond clicking a green play button on Spotify? Hayley, myself and [Fly South co-founder/owner and Williams co-manager] Mark Mercado spent so many days going back and forth trying to answer that question. What’s the right level of “annoying”?

I think, for a casual fan of Hayley, we went far beyond that with this rollout. But we knew from the beginning that this rollout was not for the casual fan. It was really important for Hayley to feel reconnected to her core fan base here. So, this rollout is meant for them.

Is there a specific reason these are being referred to as all individual singles, rather than a collected album?

The short answer is that Hayley started writing these songs towards the beginning of the year and they just poured out of her. There were some days she’d send us two songs in a single afternoon. And so I think this collection wrote itself, before any of us knew she was writing an “album.” And instead of sitting with these finished songs for months and months, and curating the tracklist, the vinyl, selecting the singles, etc., Hayley said, “What if I just put them all out as singles all on the same day?”  

What went into all the facets of the execution of this rollout?

So much. Hayley and her best friend/right hand Brian O’Connor co-founded Good Dye Young [GDY] nearly a decade ago. We knew GDY was looking to launch a limited run of Hayley’s new hair color in early Q3 of 2025, and we knew Hayley was writing this incredible batch of songs. We had the early idea to make the launch of the two synonymous. We thought it would be such a cool fan experience to rush to buy a signed carton of Hayley’s new hair dye, as they were extremely limited, but then wait…what’s this code for? 

It was, intentionally, a poorly kept secret, as we encouraged fans on the access page to share the code with their friends. We wanted to engage more than just the 2,000 hair dye purchasers with this. Jordan Short with LUUM Studio, our creative director, was key in making sure this not only looked as perfect as it did, but worked flawlessly, too. 

Another crucial component to this rollout was all of the brilliant work of our publicist, Meg Helsel at Grandstand. I am not sure you realize how difficult releasing 17 singles all on the same day that are not an album, and there is no tracklist order, but maybe there will be, is to talk about in a press release. Hayley always had a very clear vision for what this rollout would look like in the press. She wanted to do nothing that you would expect her to. So, her music dropped online, and she made a sandwich with Aimee France. And I think that created way more conversation than a more traditional interview would have. The strategy has not only been incredibly intentional but very authentic to Hayley. 

This is her first collection of solo material since 2021, and first since leaving Atlantic Records. What does this new period as an independent artist represent for her?

This era has been extremely heavy-handed on choice. It may come across cliché, but it’s truly been a reclamation of self for Hayley. She has control over who’s on her team, what’s behind her release strategy, her musical choices, how it’s being released, all of the when, where, what and why for the first time in 20-plus years. It’s not only been refreshing, but inspiring to witness. She’s having fun again. 

What have you made of the fan response to the release?

It’s unbelievable. I’ll shout out one fan here, as I literally just sent this out to a group chat of ours. It sums up how we’re all feeling. 

I think Hayley’s decision to involve and empower fans to create something alongside her was the best, and smartest, thing we’ve done, as it really is an ongoing active experience. We see it in all of the artwork and banter online and the tracklists we listen through. And it’s just the beginning — so much more is still yet to come.

What have you learned from working on this project that you can apply to other areas of your work and career?

Two things come to mind. Mark has managed Hayley and Paramore since 2004. He made the decision to bring me onto the management team with the last Paramore cycle, This Is Why. He’s not only been a mentor to me, but a real partner through all of this. And one thing he’s constantly reminding me is, there’s a whole lot of benefit to keeping your team small, but you need a team. You cannot do it all yourself. And lastly, no one knows their music and their community better than the artist themselves. 

Earlier this year, young Americans’ listening habits reached a tipping point that doesn’t bode well for legacy media companies.  

In the second quarter, AM/FM and podcasts both had a 14% share of time spent listening to audio in the 18- to 29-year-old age group. But just 11 years ago, AM/FM radio had a seemingly insurmountable lead: In 2014, Edison Research found that AM/FM listening held a seven-to-one margin over podcast listening in the same age group. 

Edison noticed a surge in young consumers’ audio listening last year. Among all age demos, the biggest increase in time spent listening to spoken word audio was seen among listeners aged 13 to 34, who devoted 23% of listening time to spoken word audio, up from 11% in 2014. That compared with smaller jumps among adults 55 and over, who dedicated 28% of time spent listening to spoken word audio in 2024, up slightly from 26% a decade earlier. For listeners aged 35 to 54, spoken word audio rose to 28% from 22% in 2014. 

So, what changed? The popularity of video podcasts is a major factor. YouTube, not Spotify, is Americans’ top destination for podcasts. However, Spotify is moving deeper into video podcasts — with encouraging results. More than 350 million users, up 65% from a year ago, streamed one of the estimated 430,000 video podcasts by the second quarter, the company revealed in its July 29 earnings call. What’s more, video consumption on Spotify is growing 20 times faster than audio consumption.  

The type of podcasts that are popular has changed, too. The most popular podcast at Apple Podcasts in 2014 was NPR’s Fresh Air, an interview show that launched in 1975. NPR and public radio — which are facing deep budget cuts — owned the top 10 list that year: This American Life, Radiolab, Planet Money and Wait Wait….Don’t Tell Me also made the list. Basically, podcasts of that era gave radio listeners an opportunity to time-shift their favorite radio programs. 

That was also the year of the first season of Serial, a groundbreaking 12-part audio series that delved into a murder conviction. Serial was an important transition point for the format, built for the podcast age but produced by public radio station WBEZ and created by Sarah Koenig, a former producer for WBEZ’s This American Life.  

Podcasting looked much different in 2024, which saw people gravitate to younger shows created as alternatives to legacy radio shows. The Joe Rogan Experience, the quintessential alternative to legacy media, topped Edison’s list of the most popular podcasts in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2024 (it was No. 3 on Apple’s list in 2014). Legacy brands appear further down the list: This American Life was No. 17, Serial (now owned by the New York Times) was No. 23 and NPR’s Up First, a daily podcast created in 2017 to provide bite-sized news content, was No. 25.  

The Daily from The New York Times, which claimed the No. 3 spot, is the closest thing in the top 10 to legacy media. By and large, the most popular podcasts are no longer radio shows. True crime and shows hosted by actors and comedians, not narrative series in the vein of Serial, now dominate. Call Her Daddy, hosted by 30-year-old Alex Cooper, was No. 4. This Past Weekend by comedian Theo Von was No. 5. Talk Tuah with Hailey Welch, better known as “The Hawk Tuah Girl,” fell just outside the top 10 at the No. 11 spot.  

Audiences’ avoidance of radio is having financial consequences. On Thursday (Aug. 7), Cumulus Media reported a 13% decline in broadcast radio revenue in the second quarter. iHeartMedia, which reports Q2 earnings on Aug. 11, reported a 5.2% decline in broadcast radio revenue in Q1. Radio companies have kept their heads above water by cutting costs and building digital businesses — including podcasts — but broadcast radio, which is still an important source of promotion (for labels) and royalties (for publishers), is in trouble.  

In contrast, podcasts are booming. A recent IAB/PwC study found podcast advertising rose 26.4% to $2.43 billion in 2024. Notably, the companies behind the podcast boom — YouTube, Apple, Spotify and Amazon — are financial behemoths that also have a hand in radio’s demise.  

None of this is to bemoan the inevitable change in media formats or the unpopularity of broadcast radio among younger listeners. As times change, the way people listen will change. But it’s important to recognize how change can have downstream effects. Some of those effects are economic (podcasts don’t generate the same royalties as radio unless listeners become subscribers to Spotify or another platform), and some of those effects are promotional (impacting how people find new music). For every generational shift in consumption, there are inevitable winners and losers — and in this round, AM/FM radio is taking the biggest hit.