Do you remember the other week when Ed Sheeran obliterated Spotify records following the release of his album Divide?
His reign as all-time king of the Swedish service did not last long.
Following the release of Drake mixtape/playlist More Life on Saturday (March 18), the Canadian has set two new 24-hour Spotify high-water marks.
The big one: Drake has officially surpassed Sheeran’s record for one-day streams, clocking up 76,355,041 plays on March 19 alone.
Sheeran’s record was set just two weeks before, on March 3, with 68,695,172 streams.
[UPDATE: Apple Music now claims that More Life racked up 89.9m streams on its service in its first full 24 hours. It won’t have escaped your attention that figure is significantly higher than Spotify’s equivalent (61.3m). Combined, it means tracks from More Life were played more than 150m times across just two streaming services within 24 hours. That’s 6.3m streams every hour, or 105,000 new plays every single minute. Wow.]
Also on March 19, Drake’s More Life racked up the best first day streams for a single album, according to Spotify.
The set totalled 61,302,082 streams in the 24 hours, surging past Divide’s 56,727,861 streams on March 3.
(Worth pointing out that Drake has described More Life as a ‘playlist’ rather than an album, and that its 22 tracks are considerably longer than Divide, which contains 16 songs.)
Drake’s previous set of new songs, last year’s LP Views, was a complete Apple exclusive for two weeks – and was unavailable on Spotify during its first fortnight after release.
More Life contains tracks featuring the likes of Kanye West and Travis Scott, as well as a slew of British talent including Skepta, Giggs and Jorja Smith.
After tracks from Sheeran’s Divide flooded global streaming playlists, the LP was responsible for 9 of the Top 10 tracks in the Official UK Singles Chart – raising plenty of questions amongst the British music industry about the methodology of the rankings.
We shall see what effect More Life has on the official weekly chart in a few days’ time…Music Business Worldwide
