Ed Sheeran detractors will often point to how his music often seems conceived in terms of what will sell, and there was kind of a nice metaphor for this today as the singer-songwriter went down to an HMV store to directly sell his new album ÷ to customers.

Sheehan was spotted in a store t-shirt (complete with ‘Ed’ name tag) at London’s Oxford Street store, where he bought a copy of the LP before getting behind the checkout and selling a few copies.

The album is expected to be one of the biggest selling records of 2017 and features the singles ‘Shape Of You’, ‘How Do You Feel (Paean)’ and ‘Castle On The Hill’.

Hitting Spotify this morning, ÷ was expected to consist of 12 tracks but the deluxe version features 16.

“I wanted to make a 2017 “The River” basically,” Sheeran told Zane Lowe of the album on Beats 1. “The whole Springsteen era where it’s very reflective I love.

"Do you know what was annoying though? Because I was like 'no one’s done this reflective thing' and I wrote and recorded it in 2015 and suddenly the Lukas Graham song came out and I was like 'Ah'.