After a year off – give or take penning the X Factor UK single – Ed Sheeran is back in the music game this morning.
The British star has released two new songs, ‘Castle on the Hill’ and ‘Shape of You’, which are already hogging the top two slots on Spotify’s global New Music Friday playlist, as well as front and centre on Apple Music and iTunes.
Sheeran is also co-hosting the Radio 1 breakfast show in the UK this morning, and he even got his own lens on Snapchat yesterday with a 30-second snippet of ‘Shape of You’.
The lens wasn’t announced as a Sheeran marketing campaign: it just appeared in the app as a pair of turquoise virtual glasses, with the track playing in the background.
Running a sponsored lens is thought to cost anywhere between $250k and $750k, although it’s unclear whether Sheeran’s label Warner Music paid for the lens, and if so, how much.
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