Taylor Swift breaks streaming records

Taylor Swift breaks streaming records

Taylor Swift’s comeback single has broken streaming records on Spotify, YouTube and Vevo.

After teasing her return with cryptic social media snake GIFs followed by the official announcement of her new album, Look What You Made Me Do dropped early on Friday (August 25) to a flurry of media coverage. The intense analysis of the track – ranging from Swift’s darker sound to lyrical disses and even the interpolation of I’m Too Sexy – continued for the next few days until the full video premiered during the MTV VMAs on Sunday (August 27).

Look What You Made Me Do quickly made its mark on Spotify: the song was streamed 10,129,087 times in the first day. As well as securing the biggest day-one streams, the track also has the biggest streaming day for a single track in Spotify history.

The track is currently at No.1 on iTunes and Spotify’s daily global chart.

Look What You Made Me Do has also broken records as the biggest debut of any video in YouTube history, earning 43.2 million views in 24 hours. At its peak, the video received more than 3m views per hour. The previous record holder was Psy's Gentleman, with 36m views in its first 24 hours. Swift's one-day total easily surpassed Despacito’s 22m views earlier this year, as well as Adele’s 2015 single Hello (27m views in 24 hours). 

The video’s current YouTube total is over 54m, with a similar number for the lyric video. With 19m views in just over 24 hours, the lyric video also smashed the previous 24-hour record, previously held by The Chainsmokers feat. Coldplay for Something Just Like This (9m views).

Vevo has also announced that Swift is set to take back the 24-hour record, which went to Adele’s Hello in October 2015. Swift’s Bad Blood, also from 2015, was the previous Vevo record holder with 20.1m. Look What You Made Me Do was initially estimated to have topped 30m one-day views on Vevo - a figure that's set to be revised upwards - ahead of Adele’s 27.7m.

With a stellar start to the campaign for her sixth album, Reputation, Swift will now have another record in her sights. Released on November 10, Reputation will need to top 800,000 in the UK to beat the week one albums record set by Adele’s 25. In the US, Reputation will need to move 3.4 million in its first week to steal Adele’s crown.

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