Ed Sheeran 'nearly breaks Spotify' with streaming record

Ed Sheeran has broken the previous Spotify record for the best first week of streams for an album with his latest release ÷.

After five days of release on Tuesday, the 26-year-old had seen more than 273m worldwide streams of his third album.

The previous record was set by The Weeknd who saw 223m streams in seven days with Starboy last November.

A Spotify Spokesperson explained: "It's fair to say Ed Sheeran nearly broke Spotify this week."

Ed's on course for a number one album this week, which will be revealed during The Official Chart with Greg James on Radio 1.

For every 1,000 streams of an album that counts as one physical sale when it comes to the chart.

This is the formula for the UK chart

It's expected he'll take over the singles charts too, having nine out of the top 10 slots in the midweeks on Monday.

Spotify has also revealed that the 16 tracks from ÷ are the most-streamed 16 tracks in the UK this week.

When it comes to the UK singles chart, 150 streams of a song counts as one physical sale.

The Official Charts Company revealed that just 6% of Ed's midweek sales came from streaming sites, so his overall total is expected to be huge for first week sales of an album.

More than 800,000 sales of Adele's 25 in November 2015 gave her that record, and that's something Ed is conscious of.

He recently told GQ magazine: "Adele is the one person who's sold more records than me in the past 10 years.

"She's the only person I need to sell more records than. That's a big feat because her last album sold 20 million.

"But if I don't set her as the benchmark then I'm selling myself short."

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