Ed Sheeran Research Paper

Busking on the streets to selling out Wembley Stadium three nights in a row. Ed Sheeran a British male solo artist started off busking on the streets to selling out stadiums. His first release was his debut EP ‘the orange room’ in 2005. He then took a leap and moved to London to pursue his music career three years later playing at least one live gig a day to become noticed. He became a multi-millionaire at the age of 23 winning many awards and many shows around the world. It was from posting his SBTV video that he starting touring with Example as his opening act. “In 2010, Ed Sheeran made a leap into the next part of his career due to online media” (Biography.com Editors, 2015) where a video which was published with Example was viewed by many people. This may have been his boost into the music industry. Ed Sheeran has been signed by Atlantic records, Asylum records, Elektra records and Warner music group.
It is clearly illustrated that Ed Sheeran is very liked and has become very successful due to his talent as he “absolutely smashes Wembley Stadium” (Downing, 2015) In July of 2015 he sold out one of the largest venues in the EU such as Wembley stadium
with a capacity of 90,000 people three nights in a row. Quoted from MTV news after his show at Wembley “he thoroughly proved himself to be one of the greatest singers- songwriters of our generation” (Downing, 2015). Through his journey through the music industry, Ed Sheeran has now launched his own record label such as ‘Gingerbread man records’ where he already has signed his first act and states how excited he is launching the record label as he states “it’s something I’ve been planning for some time, I’ve always loved endorsing acts from the very beginning and I get to work with artists I truly believe in” (Pocklington, 2015).
In relation to a music streaming site such as Spotify, Instead of criticizing Spotify, in argument with Taylor Swift as she decided to remove all music from Spotify as “ Swift initially refused to release her 2012 album Red on Spotify, criticising the fact that artists receive between just $0.006 and $0.0084 per song play” (Ellis-Petersen, 2015) Ed Sheeran supports the online music streaming site as published in the BBC news himself saying “his popularity on the site enabled him to play three nights at Wembley Stadium, my music has been streamed 860 million times, which means that it's getting out to people, he said backstage at the BBC Music Awards.
I'm playing sold-out gigs in South America, I've sold out arenas in Korea and south-east Asia. I don't think I'd be able to do that without Spotify” (Savage,
2014).