Spotify took to Instagram to celebrate the news; the post also invites users to share their experience with the song. The social media post also features a personal video from Sheeran, the singer shared how he is “Chuffed” to break and set the streaming record. The 30-year-old artist also refers to the news as “Absolutely Insane” and continued to discuss the track’s origin story. “ [‘Shape Of You’] Wasn’t really meant to make the album, but when I finished making the song, Ben Cook, from my label, said it had to be a single – but I wanted ‘Castle on the Hill’ to be the single. We put both songs out at once and…I was wrong. Here we are with ‘Shape of You’ at 3 Billion.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Spotify (@spotify)

Sheeran is no stranger to immense streaming success; the singer is also a member of the platform’s Billions Club. The hitmaker earned his place twice with singles “Happier” and “Galway Girl”, both tracks have reached over a billion streams. The Billions Club is an exclusive rank and playlist curated by Spotify based on the track’s streaming figures. The playlist also features tracks such as “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by grunge icons Nirvana and “Good 4 u” by Olivia Rodrigo.

This is not the only achievement that Sheeran has had within Spotify. The singer released his fourth studio album Equals earlier this year, the release garnered great success and reached the number spot within Spotify’s global and US top 10 album debut charts. Due to the album’s popularity, Spotify hosted a very special event in celebration of the release. The event included a traditional Sunday Roast and an intimate acoustic set by the singer.

The singer’s record-breaking single “Shape Of You” was released on 6th January 2017 and is often regarded as the catalyst to Sheeran’s worldwide popularity. The track was the lead single from his third studio album Divide and went on to win the singer various accolades. The song was nominated for British Single of the Year and British video of the year at the 2018 Brit awards. The track also won Sheeran a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2018 awards ceremony.

In more recent news, it was recently reported that Sheeran and musical partner Sir Elton John have joined the race for this year’s Christmas number one single. This year sees the two singers double their chances of winning the festive crown, both artists appear on two entries. Along with their recently released duet “Merry Christmas”, the duo also appears on former Christmas winner LadBaby’s new entry entitled “Sausage Rolls For Everyone”.

A first listen to Tom Odell’s playlist may be a cause of some surprise to listeners used to the sensitive vocal and piano compositions he is known for, to find the singer’s listening tastes to be surprisingly varied and in some cases far removed from his own music. While some tracks are more predictable given the songwriting of Odell, such as pieces by Claude Debussy, and explain his sound a little more, other tracks are in there which are very different. For example, tracks by US Rap and R&B artists like Juie WRLD, A$AP Rocky aren’t exactly similar to Tom Odell’s own music but may offer some insight into the broad taste which creatives usually have, taking influence from diverse sources, not necessarily to make something in the same style but to act as part of an eclectic pool of influences to draw subtitles from.

The social media savvy singer makes use of the description box on his playlist to invite fans to his Instagram and TikTok profiles which are fast becoming the go to tools for this generation of music promoters. While instagram has been building its sizeable user base for several years now, it is only now with the entry of the upstart TikTok platform and its groundbreaking short-form video formatted content which has lead to race between the two to become the self-promoting musician’s best friend this year. While instagram’s visual style and occasional video content has always been a good option for musicians looking to engage with fans in a way more direct and frequent than through their album and single releases, TikTok’s improved integration of music into the fundamental format of their platform has been a huge help to musicians who can now get a short clip of their song featured in hundreds of user-uploaded short videos and reach greater levels of fame and success through a new pathway.

Tom Odell also leaked on his Instagram feed today the news that he would soon be releasing new music with a photo of himself with the caption ‘can’t wait to play you all my new music,’ which suggests he has been busy writing and recording throughout this pandemic, making good use of the time which has kept British musicians at home for the best part of 2020 and now the early parts of 2021 as well. Fans would be wise to keep an eye on his playlist for clues about what this new music might sound like.