Who better to hit the half a billion Spotify plays mark than British folk-pop singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran?
First announced by Spotify, Ed Sheeran’s chart-topping “Thinking Out Loud” has become the first song ever to reach 500 million streams on Spotify.
To celebrate, the streaming service released its Ed Sheeran Index (what a name!), a measure of Ed’s popularity by country. Denmark, Norway, and Singapore have the highest concentration of Sheeran fans worldwide.
Check out the listening map below:
Spotify also shared some bonus facts highlighting the singer-songwriter’s popularity among its users.
For example, Ed Sheeran is 2nd in streams only to Eminem, and also boasts the 3rd most worldwide listeners of any artiste (behind The Weeknd and Calvin Harris). That’s right – Ed is that close behind his bff Taylor Swift’s DJ/producer boyfriend!
On top of that, a quarter of its users listen to his music at least once per month and 1 in 4 users has the recording artiste in at least one playlist.
Spotify quoted Ed as saying upon hearing the news:
Chuffed to hear that “Thinking Out Loud” has had half a billion plays on Spotify. Being the first artiste to hit that milestone is amazing. Thanks to all the people who use this as A WEDDING SONG, soundtrack to a date, and as a way to woo someone into a netflix-and-chill situation.
Aww, congrats Ed!
Sources: The Verge, Spotify, TIME.
