How Ed Sheeran Broke the Charts All Over the World
Ed Sheeran had a pretty good week. His ÷ (Divide) album pretty much ruled every album and singles chart in the known world. How did he do it? Music Industry Blog takes a look.
Unless you have been hiding under a stone on Mars this last few weeks you will have struggled not to hear or see some clip of Ed Sheeran one way or another. Atlantic Record’s carpet bombing market campaign has tipped Sheeran into global ubiquity. At the centre of this approach is a ‘be everywhere’ streaming strategy which saw Sheeran clock up over 68 million Spotify streams in 1 day (a record for any single artist). Though, the 1 billion views he clocked up for ‘Divide’ on YouTube shows where the real streaming audience of scale resides. But what makes Sheeran’s ‘Divide’ campaign stand out is what it has done to the charts. Or rather, the weaknesses in the charts that ‘Divide’ shines a light on.
What Role Should Streaming Era Charts Play?
As of March 13th, Ed Sheeran’s ‘Divide’ album accounts for 9 of the UK top 10 singles, while all of the 16 tracks on the album are in the top 20. If there was ever a sign that streaming is breaking the charts then this is it.
The writing has been on the wall for charts ever since the recorded music business decided to incorporate streams into them. Doing so was a perfectly understandable move but it is one that has incapacitated the charts. As we predicted back in 2014, incorporating streams into charts would fall over because the charts were being forced into trying to simultaneously measure sales trends and airplay. As I wrote 3 years ago: “try simultaneously [measuring airplay] with measuring sales and you end up with a diluted mish mash that does not do either job properly.”
