Marketing and distribution On August 18, 2017, Swift blanked out all of her social media accounts, which prompted media speculation on new music. In the following days, she uploaded silent short videos of
CGI snakes onto social media, which attracted widespread press attention. Imagery of snakes was inspired by the West–Kardashian controversy and featured prominently in the album's promotional campaign. On August 23, she announced on
Instagram the title
Reputation and released the cover artwork. Photographed by
Mert and Marcus, the cover is a black-and-white photograph of an expressionless Swift in slicked-back hair, a loose-fitting grey sweatshirt with a zig-zag stitch on the right shoulder, and a
choker necklace. Her name is printed multiple times over one side of her face, in a typeface resembling that used in newspapers. Media outlets interpreted the design as a mockery at the media scrutiny. The cover inspired many
internet memes and was listed among the worst album covers of 2017 by
Billboard and
Exclaim! The latter dismissed it as a "packaging for a sickly sweet, heavily discounted celebrity fragrance you'd find on the back shelf at
Shoppers Drug Mart".
Reputation lead single, "Look What You Made Me Do", was released on August 24. The single peaked at number one on the
Billboard Hot 100 in its second week of charting, with the biggest single-week sales and
streaming figures of 2017 in the United States, and was Swift's first number-one single in the United Kingdom; its music video broke the record for the most 24-hour views on YouTube. Shortly after the single's release,
UPS announced a partnership with Swift, which included
Reputation-branded trucks and award-winning contests promoting the album across US cities. Other corporate tie-ins were a
Ticketmaster partnership for a concert tour; an
AT&T deal for a behind-the-scenes series chronicling the making of
Reputation; and a
Target partnership for two deluxe album editions, each featuring an exclusive magazine with poetry, paintings, handwritten lyrics, and behind-the-scenes photography. Swift collaborated with
ESPN to preview the second single, "...Ready for It?", during a college football match on September 2; it opened at number four on the
Billboard Hot 100. Kate Knibbs of
The Ringer labelled the partnerships as "maximum commercialization" and wrote, "If [Swift] was going to be a snake, she was going to be an ultracapitalist snake." and the track "New Year's Day" premiered during the broadcast of an episode of
ABC's
Scandal. Throughout late 2017 and early 2018, a string of singles were released to support the album: "End Game" was released to French radio by
Mercury Records on November 14, "New Year's Day" impacted US
country radio on November 27, and "Delicate" was released to US pop radio on March 12. The last of which was the album's most successful radio single, Swift began
re-recording her first six studio albums, which include
Reputation, in November 2020. This decision followed a
2019 dispute between Swift and the talent manager
Scooter Braun, who acquired Big Machine Records and the masters of Swift's albums. Re-recording them would enable her to have full licensing rights of her songs for
commercial use. On May 30, 2025, the dispute ended with Swift acquiring the masters to those albums; the re-recorded version of
Reputation had not been completed by that point.
Performances in 2018|alt=Taylor Swift performing while dressed in a black dress Although Swift had actively promoted albums with extensive press interviews and television appearances, she opted out of such a campaign for
Reputation. She instead held exclusive secret album-listening sessions within one month in advance for fans selected from social media by herself, hosting them at her homes in
Rhode Island, Los Angeles, London, and Nashville. She appeared on the cover for
British Vogue, for which she appointed her own photographers and published a self-written poem instead of giving an interview. In an interview with
Zane Lowe for
Apple Music in May 2019, Swift said she turned down interviews because she felt no need to explain the album and used music as the only medium to convey her thoughts and feelings. On the title's
all lowercase styling, she said it was because the album "wasn't unapologetically commercial"—that it "took the most amount of explanation, and yet it's the one [she] didn't talk about". She embarked on the
Reputation Stadium Tour, which kicked off on May 8, 2018, in
Glendale, Arizona and featured supporting acts such as
Charli XCX and
Camila Cabello. The tour's visual and stage settings incorporated prominent snakes imagery. It encompassed 53 shows across four continents and wrapped up on November 21, 2018, in Tokyo, Japan. The track "Getaway Car" was released as an Australasia-exclusive single to support the Oceanic leg of the Reputation tour in October and November. Earning $266.1 million, the 38-show North American leg surpassed
the Rolling Stones' 70-show US leg of their
A Bigger Bang Tour ($245 million; 2005–2007) to become the all-time highest-grossing North American tour. In total, the Reputation Stadium Tour grossed $345.7 million, according to
Billboard Boxscore. The second show at
AT&T Stadium in
Arlington, Texas, was recorded and released as a
Netflix exclusive on December 31, 2018. == Commercial performance ==