Ed Sheeran breaks more records, tops 1 billion YouTube views and more with new album ‘Divide’
Ed Sheeran returned with his second album last week and the singer/songwriter is already breaking records again as hundreds-of-millions of people listen around the world.
After surprise dropping two new singles at the start of this year Ed Sheeran has been dominating Spotify, with new track ‘Shape Of You’ spending the last 9 weeks since release at number 1 on Spotify. Now in just over 4 days or releasing ‘Divide’ Sheeran has broken another record for the most streams in the first week of an album ever, taking the record from The Weeknd who’s ‘Starboy’ racked up 223 million streams in it’s first 7 days.
Ed Sheeran completely smashed The Weeknd’s existing record, surpassing 218 million streams at the start of Tuesday with over 273 million streams by the end of the day. But that’s not enough on it’s own for Sheeran, who managed to also break the record for the Best First Day streams for an album, achieving an outstanding 56,727,861 streams by the end of it’s first day out. This again smashed the record previously held by The Weeknd, who achieved 29 million first day streams last November.
It’s not just on Spotify that Sheeran is dominating the music scene, after making his entire album streamable on YouTube and earning over a billion views by Wednesday. YouTube, who are understandably chuffed with his decision, revealed that Sheeran had managed to earn over 3 million subscribers in only 2 months, after adding 1.4 million subscribers in January alone.
YouTube’s global head of music, Lyor Cohen said: “Ed Sheeran is one of the biggest stars in the world and his new album is his best yet. For years, he’s paired his songs with consistently creative music videos, so it’s great to see fans rushing to YouTube to watch them and show support for his new album.”
Ed Sheeran’s YouTube performance would be impressive enough if it weren’t for the fact it was mostly achieved via his two surprise singles. ‘Shape Of You’ has so far earned over 400 million streams on it’s lyric video and more than 320 million views on it’s official video. Meanwhile ‘Castle On The Hill’ has 170 million views on it’s lyric video and 102 million on it’s official video. That’s essentially a billion views on it’s own.