For the music industry, the rollout of a new Taylor Swift album is always a master class in marketing, and the release of “Look What You Made Me Do,” the first single, is a case in point.

Even before the song came out late last month, the mere fact that Ms. Swift had wiped her social media accounts clean — a “watch this space” signal — was covered as major entertainment news. Once out, the single instantly broke streaming records on Spotify and YouTube, while fans clogged Twitter to decode the celebrity score-settling in its lyrics. All the noise seemed to guarantee a big splash for the album, “Reputation,” due Nov. 10.

Yet in the three years since Ms. Swift’s last album, the music industry has changed so drastically that much of the old playbook no longer applies. Like Adele, whose 2015 album “25” reached sales peaks that the industry had long since given up on, or Beyoncé, whose every public gesture is scrutinized in detail, Ms. Swift, 27, can turn any release into a pop-culture phenomenon and a referendum on the state of the business. But what counts as a hit when all the traditional goal posts keep moving?

In 2014, when Ms. Swift released her last album, “1989,” streaming accounted for only 23 percent of music consumption in the United States, according to Nielsen, and it was still seen as unproven format. Ms. Swift snubbed Spotify as a “grand experiment” with unappealing economics, and “1989” sold 1,287,000 copies in its first week, better than any album in the previous 12 years.