Taylor Swift dropped her first single, "Look What You Made Me Do," off her upcoming album Reputation and she broke all kinds of records pretty much immediately. While the sneak peek of images from the song's video have received criticism for appearing to be quite strongly influenced by Beyonce's "Formation" video, it appears that all publicity is still good publicity, as seemingly the whole world tuned in to check out Swift's newest song.
According to Billboard, LWYMMD has sold more downloads in a single day than any song has sold in a week in the past six months. Not only that, the lyric video for the song had the most views in 24 hours on YouTube than any other lyric video in the site's history. Oh, and the song was the most-played song on radio stations in the U.S. on Friday.
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That wasn't the only record Swift's song broke. She also set Spotify's global first-day record with a reported 8 million streams of LWYMMD. That record was only possible because Swift put her music back on Spotify earlier this summer — coincidentally on the same day that Katy Perry's newest album dropped. Swift had removed all her music from the platform in 2014, after penning an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that was critical of streaming services. At the time, she wrote, "It's my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is. I hope they don't underestimate themselves or undervalue their art."
Billboard reports that industry insiders are reporting that LWYMMD will likely sell half a million downloads in its first week, and Swift has broken records previously held by Adele for "Hello." If you want to watch the video's debut, tune into the VMAs tonight.
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