After taking a full year off, Ed Sheeran has shown the world that a little time off is a good thing and has bounced back by successfully nabbing the Spotify's day one streaming record with two new songs.
Last Friday Jan. 6, Sheeran released two singles, "Castle on the Hill" and "Shape of You," off his upcoming album ÷ (read as "Divide"). Within 24 hours, "Castle on the Hill" accumulated 6,168,395 streams while "Shape of You" had a total of 6,868,642 streams. In all, Sheeran received over 13 million global streams in the one day period, as reported by MTV News.
Sheeran takes the record away from One Direction, their single "Drag Me Down" received 4,759,698 streams on July 31, 2015. 1D previously nabbed the record from Wiz Khalifa, whose song "See You Again" had a total of 4.26 million streams on April 17, 2015, as reported by Billboard.
Sheeran has recognized all of the support his new songs have received. And on Jan. 7, a day after releasing his two singles, he tweeted, "Truly overwhelmed with the reaction to these new songs, I've never had anything like this, thank you for all your wonderful messages x."
"Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill" continue to climb the charts, currently holding the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, respectively, on the iTunes "Top Songs" chart. Sheeran has not set a release date for ÷ yet, but plans to drop the album sometime this year.