Ed Sheeran's newest and third album "Divide" or styled as ÷ was launched on March 3. The 26-year-old singer took a year long hiatus from the social media and returned in December 2016 with new album materials. After his CD went into stores, the singer and songwriter released the full tracks of his album as videos on YouTube as part of his promotional tactic. The album hit 1 billion total views on YouTube alone. Adding to that, he also announced his North American tour dates, which will begin on June 29.

Third album

Ed Sheeran hinted on the new album in anticipation of his fans on social media, where he wrote on an Instagram post in December 2015, “The 3rd album is on its way and is the best thing I have made thus far.

See you all next autumn, and thank you for being amazing.” That was before he went on a well-deserved break after five years of breaking and tearing pop charts. To mark his return to Twitter and Instagram, Ed Sheeran posted a picture of a blue square last December, which turned out as another hint at the look of his “Divide” album.

Amazing statistics

With the release last Friday, Ed Sheeran’s "Divide" snagged the Best First Day streams for an album achievement on Spotify, with 56,727,861 streams. The title previous went to The Weekend’s Starboy in November 2016. Sheeran's single “Shape of You” became the Best One Day streams for a track with 10,123,630 streams. With a total of over 45.5 million monthly listeners, he is now the most streamed artist on music streaming service Spotify.

The British singer-songwriter might have just cracked the social media promotion code.

On video-sharing website YouTube, Ed Sheeran’s “Divide” was performing extremely well, generating a total of 1 billion views in just two days.

The album has a total of 16 tracks. Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s Global Head of Music, told Radio.com, “For years, he’s paired his songs with consistently creative music videos, so it’s great to see fans rushing to YouTube to watch them and show support for his new album.” Ed Sheeran’s YouTube channel currently shows more than 13 million people are subscribed. Ed Sheeran has announced that he'll be touring North America from June to October as part of his 2017 World Tour.