There is no way to escape Ed Sheeran.

With what seemed like relentless promotion to assist, his comeback single – ‘Shape of You’ – took to #1 on the Hot 100 and has been there for seven non-consecutive weeks.  Now, the tune’s parent album – ‘Divide’ – is following its lead.

As we reported here, the popularity of the project was so high its predicted first week sales were revised upward from 425k to 435k-445k.  Just a few days later we learned the album even exceeded that.

Curious to know how many units his faithful #Sheerios snatched up during ‘Divide’s first full week of availability?  The number lies after the jump:

First Week Sales:  451,000

Chart Placement:  #1

Billboard reports:

Further, ÷ starts with 322,000 in traditional album sales — again, the largest sales frame for an album since 4 Your Eyez Only debuted with 363,000 copies sold.

Additionally, ÷ logs the biggest streaming week for an album since 4 Your Eyez Only’s debut frame. ÷ earned 90,000 streaming equivalent album units (which equates to 134.6 million streams of songs from the album in the tracking week).

With the impressive figure, Sheeran’s landed the highest opening week sales of any album released this year.  Add to this, ‘Divide’ – the singer/songwriter’s follow-up to the hotly selling ‘X’ (2014) – doubled the first week sales of its predecessor. ‘X’ opened at #1 in 2014 to the sum of 209,000 sold.

Check in later this week when we provide the updated ‘Chart Check’ to reflect its latest refreshment.

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