Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You is now Spotify’s most-streamed song of all time

Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You is now officially the most-streamed track of all time on Spotify, having overtaken Drake’s One Dance.

Shape Of You, released via Atlantic Records, has 1.318bn plays on Spotify as of today (Sept 22) according to the streaming company.

One Dance currently stands at 1.317bn plays, ahead of another billion streamer – The Chainsmokers’ Closer.

Despite releasing his latest album, Divide, back in March, Sheeran is the most-streamed artist in the world on Spotify right now with over 40m monthly listeners.

He is the second most-streamed artist of all time on the service, with over 10bn plays. (Second only to Drake.)

Using the approximate rule that Spotify’s music rights-holder payout (across free and paid) sits at around $0.005 per stream, that means Sheeran’s catalogue will have generated around $50m for the artist and his music business affiliates on the platform so far.

Globally on Spotify, Ed Sheeran is most popular in Mexico City, where he currently has over 850,000 monthly listeners.

“Ed, myself and Johnny never even thought it was an Ed Sheeran record – we just thought it was a good little pop song. Ben and Ed Howard [at Atlantic] heard something different; that’s why they’re good at their jobs!”

Steve Mac

Shape Of You was released in January.

The track was co-written by Sheeran with Steve Mac and Johnny McDaid. It was produced by Sheeran and Mac.

Atlantic certainly pulled their weight in getting Shape Of You to the level of popularity it enjoys today.

Atlantic UK’s Ben Cook and Ed Howard were instrumental in convincing Sheeran to make the song a lead single.

Speaking in the latest edition of MBW’s World’s Greatest Managers series, Sheeran manager Stuart Camp explained:

“With Shape of You, we were recording drums on a track and Ed said, ‘Oh I wrote this other song earlier, I think I might give it to Rihanna,’ and he played Shape of You.

“To be fair, I was tired and hungry so I wasn’t really listening, but Ben Cook started saying, What the f*ck is this! So you do get those eureka moments.

“[Cook and Howard] said, ‘This has to go on.’”

And Steve Mac, himself interviewed in our World’s Greatest Songwriters series earlier this year, said: “Ed, myself and Johnny never even thought it was an Ed Sheeran record – we just thought it was a good little pop song.

“Ben and Ed Howard [at Atlantic] heard something different; that’s why they’re good at their jobs!”Music Business Worldwide