RIAA To Now Factor Streaming in Gold & Platinum Album Certifications

Back in 2013, RIAA first added on-demand streams to its Digital Single Award to adapt to the latest trends in the music industry.

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Today, the agency has announced that it will now include on-demand audio and video streams and a track sale equivalent in Gold & Platinum Album Award certifications. This means that the program’s iconic benchmarks – 500,000 (Gold), 1,000,000 (Platinum) and 2,000,000 plus (multi-Platinum) will count both sales and streams for both single and album certifications. This now explains RIAA awarding Rihanna a platinum certification for her new album ANTI and this could be strategical reason why she delayed the album to release it during the week the agency made changes to its formula.

According to the press release, the agency did a comprehensive study and came to the following conclusion for the calculation:

1,500 on-demand audio and/or video song streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sale

They have also updated its Digital Single Award ratio from 100 on-demand streams = 1 download to 150 on-demand streams = 1 download.

Said Cary Sherman, Chairman and CEO, RIAA:

“For nearly six decades, whether it’s vinyl, CDs, downloads or now streams, the Gold & Platinum Program has adapted to recognize the benchmarks of success in an evolving music marketplace. We know that music listening – for both for albums and songs – is skyrocketing, yet that trend has not been reflected in our album certifications. Modernizing our Album Award to include music streaming is the next logical step in the continued evolution of Gold & Platinum Awards, and doing so enables RIAA to fully reward the success of artists’ albums today.”

Seventeen titles, encompassing albums from dozens of music labels and spanning many genres, are included in the inaugural certifications for the newly expanded Album Award. RIAA is today awarding the following artists with new certifications:

Alt-J “An Awesome Wave” (Atlantic Records) Gold, Big Sean “Dark Sky Paradise” (Def Jam Recordings) Platinum, Brett Eldredge “Bring You Back” (Atlantic Nashville) Gold, Coldplay “Ghost Stories” (Atlantic/Parlophone) Platinum, Elle King “Love Stuff” (RCA) Gold, Fifth Harmony “Reflection” (Epic) Gold, Halsey “Badlands” (Astralwerks) Gold, Hozier “Hozier” (Columbia) Platinum, Kendrick Lamar “To Pimp a Butterfly” (Top Dawg Entertainment/Interscope) Platinum, Michael Jackson “Thriller” (Epic/Legacy) 32X Multi-Platinum, Miranda Lambert “Platinum” (RCA Nashville) Platinum, Romeo Santos “Fórmula Vol. 2” (Sony Latin) 11X Diamante/RIAA Latin G&P Program, Sam Hunt “Montevallo” (MCA Nashville) 2X Multi-Platinum, Shawn Mendes “Handwritten” (Island Records) Platinum, The Weeknd “Beauty Behind the Madness” (XO/Republic Records) 2X Multi-Platinum, Vance Joy “Dream Your life Away” (Atlantic Records) Gold and Wale “Ambition” (Atlantic Urban) Gold.