Ed Sheeran’s ‘Divide’ Breaks 1st Week Album Record In 4 Days
Ed Sheeran’s new record ÷ (‘Divide’) has smashed the previous record for most first week streams of an album in a little over 4 days. The previous first week record was held by The Weeknd, who got 223 million streams in the 7 days after the release of 'Starboy' last November.
Sheeran's ‘Divide’ exceeded 218 million streams in just over 4 days in the early hours of Tuesday, March 7th. By the end of Tuesday, the album's fifth day of release, 'Divide' had over 273 million streams, and is on course for a massive week.
'Shape of You' is currently Global #1 on Spotify, and 'Galway Girl' is Global number 2. All 16 album tracks are in Spotify's Global Top 50.
Sheeran also broke the record for the Best First Day streams for an album (56,727,861 streams), almost doubling the record set by the previous record holder, The Weeknd’s Starboy, with 29 million streams in November 2016.
To be honest, I’m wondering when this sort of thing will stop becoming news.
Streaming is growing in popularity, so it makes sense that every major release from a media-darling force-fed-pop type of artist will of course break new records.
I’m keen to see when it starts to decline more than when it gets bigger and bigger.