Bad Bunny Smashes Record Previously Held By Ed Sheeran

While Ed Sheeran has been wildly successful for over a decade, there’s someone who might have even more fans on Spotify.

Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) was named Spotify’s Artist Of The Year in 2022 (for the third year running), and for good reason: his fourth solo album, Un Verano Sin Ti, released last year, has become the most streamed album in Spotify’s history, overtaking a record previously held by Ed Sheeran’s Divide.

After Un Verano Sin Ti’s May 2022 release, the album went on to hit #1 on the Billboard 200, achieving a mind-blowing 356.66 million streams in its first week. Un Verano Sin Ti holds the record for the highest streaming numbers for a Latin music album.

According to an NPR report on How Bad Bunny Became The Biggest Pop Star In 2022, the rapper, singer, songwriter and producer has found the success he has today by building a fanbase outside of the US first. Last year, Bad Bunny’s fourth album sat on top of the Billboard 200 for 13 consecutive weeks, the most time any album spent at #1 in the US in 2022.

NPR states that Un Verano Sin Ti connected with so many in and outside the US because “he embraced another kind of euphoria: the music of his home. There, he made space for the tangled realities of Caribbean life — its forced resilience, yes, but also its small, perfect joys.” You can listen to the album here.

Ed Sheeran is one of the most successful artists in Australia, with each album spending weeks high up in the ARIA Albums Chart and singles dominating the airwaves whenever he’s promoting new music.

Earlier this year, he broke the attendance record for a concert at Melbourne’s MCG, with his show on Friday, 3 March, selling over 107,000 tickets. A second show, held the night before but announced after the first one sold out, managed to sell over 100,000 tickets. He also smashed the attendance record for Perth’s Optus Stadium.

The Music’s review of his Suncorp Stadium show stated, “No ordinary person would be able to hold the attention of an entire stadium with just a voice and a guitar, but Ed Sheeran is no ordinary person. Except that he is, in the way we all are, and that’s the magic of his music.

“Sometimes a guitar and a voice are all you need to puncture the heart when it comes down to it. Not every song needs to be anthemic to be an anthem or be sonically unreal to belong in a stadium.” You can read the full review here.