Ed Sheeran Broke Spotify’s Release Day Streaming Record…Twice
We’re finally at the point with music streaming where it has overtaken sales, and with the listener base growing at such a fast clip, it means previous streaming achievements are liable to be broken any time a big star releases new material. Which brings us to Ed Sheeran. He dropped two new songs on Friday (January 6), and ended up breaking Spotify’s release day streaming record…twice.
“Shape Of You” and “Castle On The Hill” garnered 13 million combined global streams in the first 24 hours — “Shape Of You” logged 6,868,642 streams and “Castle On The Hill” landed 6,168,395 plays, both smashing the previous “day one” record set in 2015 by One Direction‘s “Drag Me Down” with 4.76 million. In the first 48 hours, the two songs accounted for a combined 25.8 million global spins on Spotify, with six million of them coming in the US.
The songs were in the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on the Spotify global and U.S. charts, the Apple Music charts and iTunes. Oh and also they have the Taylor Swift stamp of approval which certainly helped him reach those numbers.
