Ed Sheeran 'nearly broke Spotify' with streaming numbers for new album

Singer-songwriter topples previous record for most album streams in first week of release

(PA)

Ed Sheeran has smashed the previous Spotify record held by The Weeknd for the best first-week streams of an album.

After five days, the 26-year-old has clocked up more than 273 million streams of his third album ÷ [Divide].

The record was previously held by The Weeknd who saw his album receive 223m streams in seven days with his most recent album Starboy.

A Spotify spokesperson commented: "It's fair to say that Ed Sheeran nearly broke Spotify this week."

Sheeran is essentially a dead cert for No.1 album this week, the news of which will be revealed during The Official Chart with Greg James on Radio 1 at 4pm.

It is expected that he will also take over the singles charts, having held nine out of 10 slots in the midweeks on Monday.

The 16 tracks from ÷ are currently the 16 most-streamed tracks on Spotify this week.

Just 6 per cent of Sheeran's midweek sales came from streaming sites, the midweek chart report revealed.

The most popular format for his LP his physical: 63 per cent of sales are from CD and vinyl, while digital accounts for the remaining 31 per cent.

It seems as though the final record Sheeran has to beat is Adele's - for the number of units he can shift in the first week.

Adele sold more than 800,000 copies of her album 25 in its first week of release in 2015, which was not available to streaming services in that time.

Sheeran's album sales are expected to surpass 500,000 - after three days he had already sold 432,000 copies.