Channel 24 reported that Ed Sheeran has smashed Spotify records with his new album Divide. The album drew nearly twice as many listens on its first day as the previous leader. Spotify, the world's largest streaming service said that the pop singer's album was heard nearly 57 million times on Friday, its first day of release.
This figure far outpaced the previous record-holder, R&B sensation The Weeknd's Starboy, which drew 29 million streams when it was released in November. 26-year-old Sheeran performed especially well in his native Britain and in Ireland, where he traces ancestry and whose traditional music he incorporated in two songs on Divide. In both Britain and Ireland, all 16 songs on Divide were the top 16 on Spotify's chart of the country's most-streamed songs.
