Photo: Press
Ed Sheeran’s global domination shows absolutely no signs at all of slowing down after it was revealed that he’d broken the previous Spotify record for best first week of streams for an album with the annoyingly titled ÷.
As of Tuesday – a mere five days after the album was released – Sheeran’s album has been streamed a staggering 273m times, reports the BBC. Just stop for a moment and take that figure in. 273m times.
The Weeknd, whose album Starboy was streamed 223m in the first seven days of its release last November, held the previous record. That doesn’t really seem like a such a big deal now in the face of Sheeran’s relentless onslaught.
A spokesperson for Spotify said: "It's fair to say Ed Sheeran nearly broke Spotify this week."
The staggering volume of streams are doing their bit to propel Sheeran and his preposterously titled album to the top of the UK album charts. When it comes to calculating the chart, every 1000 streams of the album count for one physical sale. This is the equivalent of 273,000 album sales.
Not only that, Sheeran is also expected to dominate the singles chart, too. Spotify has confirmed that all 16 tracks from Sheeran’s third album are the most streamed tracks of the week.
Meanwhile, Sheeran’s seemingly unstoppable global domination has been emphatically displayed with his take over of New Zealand’s charts. As with up here, every single one of the songs from ÷ will feature in the country’s Top 40.
Recorded Music NZ chart compiler Paul Kennedy is quoted by Stuff as saying: "It's a phenomenon of the new age in music availability, and streaming in particular, that this sort of chart dominance is even possible – but it's also a reflection of the extent to which Ed Sheeran's music resonates with the New Zealand public that he's able to rule the chart quite so convincingly.”
So there you have it. Game over. It’s Ed Sheeran’s world and we just live in it.
