÷ (2017)

÷ (Divide) is the third studio album by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. It was released on 3 March 2017 through Asylum Records and Atlantic Records. "Castle on the Hill" and "Shape of You" were released as the album's lead singles on 6 January 2017. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. As of March 2024, the deluxe version of the album is the second most streamed album of all time on Spotify.

The album was number one in the United Kingdom, selling 672,000 copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling album by a male solo artist there and the highest opening behind Adele's 25 and Oasis' Be Here Now. ÷ topped the charts in over 25 territories across the globe, including the United States, Canada, and Australia. In April 2018, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry named ÷ the best-selling album worldwide of the year. In October 2019, it was ranked the fifth best-selling album of the 21st century in the UK.

All the tracks on the album reached the top 20 of the UK Singles Chart in the week of the album's release. The dominance of its tracks on the UK chart led to calls for change on how the singles chart is compiled, and the Official Charts Company then introduced new rules limiting tracks eligible for entry in the top 100 to three per artist, as well as adjusting the streams-to-sales ratio for older songs. His fourth single from ÷, "Perfect", reached number one in the US, Australia and the UK, where it became the Christmas number one of 2017.

To promote the album, Sheeran embarked on a worldwide concert tour, entitled the ÷ Tour. Comprising 260 shows, it started on 16 March 2017 and ended on 26 August 2019 with the last of four homecoming gigs in Ipswich, Suffolk. By August 2019, it had become the biggest, most attended, and highest-grossing tour of all time.

Background

On 13 December 2015, Sheeran announced a self-imposed hiatus from social media, commenting that he found himself "seeing the world through a screen and not my eyes." He further ensured that some of this time would be spent creating his third album, which he considered "the best thing I have made thus far." Exactly one year after this announcement, on 13 December 2016, Sheeran's various social media platforms posted pictures of a blank blue square to state his imminent return to music. On 1 January 2017, Sheeran officially ended his hiatus by announcing that "new music" would be released on 6 January. On 12 January 2017, Sheeran revealed the tracklist and the release date for the album with its pre-order.

Release

÷ was released on 3 March 2017 through Asylum Records.

Worldwide, on the day of its release, the tracks of the album achieved a total of 56.73 million streams on Spotify in a single day, breaking the previous record of 29 million for Starboy by the Weeknd in November 2016. In total, all tracks by Sheeran were streamed 68.7 million times that day, with the single "Shape of You" receiving 10.12 million streams, both also breaking previous records on Spotify. Both records were broken by Drake's More Life 16 days later. By its second day of release, the videos of songs from the album had achieved a cumulative one billion views on YouTube, including figures from "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill" released earlier.