Kudos to anyone who’s successfully avoided all exposure to Taylor Swift’s new song. (Do tell your secret!) Less than a week after its release, Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do†has broken all sorts of streaming records, and it only really needed a day to do it. According to Nielsen, in just 24 hours, the official video racked up 43.2 million views after its debut during the VMAs, making it the biggest debut of any video in YouTube history. That number breaks Psy’s 2013 record with “Gentleman,†which scored 36 million views in 24 hours. All told, both the song and its videos (the lyric video and the full music video) broke a few single-day records, including Spotify’s global first-day streaming record (8 million streams, beating Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of Youâ€) and YouTube’s first-day lyric video record (19 million views, beating the Chainsmokers’ “Closerâ€).
The song is currently on track to sell half a million downloads, the largest sales week for a single since Adele’s “Hello.†(You’ll recall Adele went on to have the biggest sales week for an album in Billboard history.) At the time of publication, Taylor’s video has 59.4 million views, so just a little less than 2.5 billion more to go until it beats the all-time record held by “Despacito.†Already, “Look What You Made Me Do†is eyeing a No. 1 debut, which is bad news for the song of the summer, which up until now seemed close to breaking the record for longest time at No. 1.