Ed Sheeran’s return to music is already bearing fruit, with the singer’s two new songs breaking Spotify’s record for most streams on “day one” of their release.
The 25-year-old debuted Shape Of You and Castle On The Hill on Radio 1 on Friday morning, with the two songs reaching more than 13 million combined streams in 24 hours.
One Direction previously held the record for 2015 hit Drag Me Down, which received 4,759,698 streams. Shape Of You managed a staggering 6,868,642 streams within 24 hours of hitting Spotify, while Castle On The Hill accumulated 6,168,395.
The songs are the first the public had heard from the Thinking Out Loud singer since his year-long hiatus to “see the world”, with an album, ÷, expected later this year.
It took just 48 hours for Ed to reach more than 25 million streams worldwide, with some five million of those coming from the UK.
Ed took to Twitter to express his thanks to fans for supporting the music.
truly overwhelmed with the reaction to these new songs, I've never had anything like this, thank you for all your wonderful messages x
— Ed Sheeran (@edsheeran) January 7, 2017
