Ed Sheeran’s third album ‘divide’ has just delivered an incredible first-week sales figure in Australia. 97,014 copies were sold in the first week.
The Sheeran phenomena is even more impressive when you zoom out and look at the Top 5. Sheeran has numbers 1, 3 and 4 of the top 5. Ed Sheeran’s three albums collectively sold over 106,000 copies in Australia last week with his ‘multiply’ at no 3 with 3,818 sales and the debut ‘plus’ at no 4 with 2,523 sales.
Ed Sheeran fans bought the album fairly evenly via download or CD. 49,491 people purchased the album via download, the rest on CD.
On the singles chart, Ed Sheeran has 16 songs in the Top 40.
At no 1 there is ‘Shape of You’, no 2 he has ‘Castle On The Hill’, then no 5 with ‘Dive’, no 6 with ‘Perfect’, no 10 with ‘Galway Girl’. No 13 with ‘How Do You Feel (Paean), no 16 with ‘Happier’, no 19 with ‘Supermarket Flowers’, no 20 with ‘New Man’, no 24 with ‘What Do I Know’, no 31 with ‘Eraser’, no 32 with ‘Hearts Don’t Break Around Here’, no 36, with Barcelona’, no 37 with ‘Nancy Mulligan’, no 38 with ‘Save Myself’ and no 39 with ‘Bibya Be Ye Ye’.
While you will probably read a lot of “record breaking” chart stories this week the industry can only draw comparisons back to when ARIA started to include streaming figures in their statistics as Ed’s domination of the Top 40 is more about people streaming the songs rather than buying them. Any ‘record-breaking’ claim will only date back just over the last year.
However, it is still impressive.
The first week sales for the ‘divide’ album make it the biggest selling album since Susan Boyle ‘I Dreamed A Dream’, Adele ’25’ in 2015 and Damien Leith’s debut ‘The Winner’s Journey’ in 2006. Susan Boyle ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ sold 164,973 first week in 2009. Adele ’25’ sold 126,063 first week in November 2015. Leith sold 101,206 copies in his first week in December 2006.
