Ed Sheeran has been smashing Spotify records with his new album ÷ (Divide) and has now reached a milestone on YouTube too.
As of Sunday, the sixteen videos released from Dividehave hit over 1 billion views.
The views span videos for ‘Castle on a Hill’ and ‘Shape of You’, which were released at the beginning of January – and also cover the 14 new lyric videos that were uploaded when Sheeran’s third album arrived on Friday.
In the last two months alone, the British artist’s channel has gained over 3 million subscribers – the most of any channel this year.
“For years, ed sheeran has paired his songs with consistently creative music videos, so it’s great to see fans rushing to YouTube to watch them and show support for his new album.”
Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s new Global Head of Music, said: “Ed Sheeran is one of the biggest stars in the world and his new album is his best yet.
“For years, he’s paired his songs with consistently creative music videos, so it’s great to see fans rushing to YouTube to watch them and show support for his new album.”
Atlantic Records have bolstered Sheeran’s YouTube presence through the use of lyric videos, art tracks, live videos and premium music videos, as well as allowing user-generated content to flourish.
Sheeran currently occupies six spots out of YouTube’s Top 100 Videos for the week ending February 23.
On Friday, Divide drew 56.73m streams on Spotify worldwide – a new record for first-day plays of an LP on the platform.
Before Divide came along, the record was held by The Weeknd’s Starboy, with 29m streams in November 2016.Music Business Worldwide
