The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced the integration of streams to its Gold & Platinum (G&P) certification program. On-demand audio and/or video song streams will now be counted towards the 500,000 (Gold), 1,000,000 (Platinum) and 2,000,000 plus (multi-Platinum) thresholds required for G&P’s Digital Single Award certification.
The RIAA has added 56 titles in the inaugural certifications for the newly expanded Digital Single Award. Specifically, the RIAA is awarding 11 Gold, 18 Platinum and 27 multi-Platinum new “combined” Digital Single Awards counting both downloads and streams. This includes streams from on-demand services like MOG, Muve Music, Rdio, Rhapsody, Slacker, Spotify, Xbox Music and others, plus video streaming services like MTV com, VEVO, Yahoo! Music, YouTube and more.
“Including music streaming in Gold & Platinum awards marks the continued evolution of the industry’s premier program for recognizing artistic achievement, and it reflects the wide spectrum of ways consumers enjoy music from their favorite bands,” said Cary Sherman, RIAA Chairman/CEO. “The music business, along with its incredible array of digital service partners, is offering fans more access to music than ever before. We’re thrilled that our awards will now more fully recognize artists’ commercial success today.”
This new expansion of the G&P Program – the approach, methodology and formula – was the culmination of a year-long project by the RIAA, led by Sherman, and a variety of label marketing, business and data analysis executives, in which the RIAA examined comprehensive information comparing data on digital downloads to similar data on on-demand audio and video streams. The RIAA also closely consulted with NARM/digitalmusic.org, many digital music services, artist managers and industry leaders. It is important to note the new certification approach, including the formula of 100 streams being equivalent to one download, is an approximate barometer of comparative consumer activity; the financial value of streams and downloads were not factored into the equation.
On-demand streams on digital music services that are authorized by and reported to the record labels, whether paid for by the consumer through a subscription or free to the consumer through ad-supported services, will be accepted for RIAA certifications. Only official label/company videos count towards certification; user generated videos do not.
The RIAA developed its Gold & Platinum Awards Program in 1958 to honor artists and create a standard by which to measure the commercial success of a sound recording. The program trademarked the Gold record and formalized the industry practice of presenting awards to artists for music sales achievements.
First awarded to LP recordings but expanded to a number of formats overtime to include cassette tapes, CDs, digital tracks, digital albums, ringtones, and now streams, more than 14,000 titles have been certified by the RIAA during the last 55 years. Source: RIAA
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