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Brian W.
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| Posted: 20 June 2006 at 9:36pm | IP Logged
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First time they've ever RAISED the certification standard, and, for the first time, it's retroactive! Many singles will actually be LOSING their Platinum status.
From the RIAA:
New Thresholds for Digital Single Certifications - As the digital music marketplace continues to mature, we recognized a need to raise the existing sales criteria for the Digital Gold and Platinum program to meet the physical sales levels that we have recognized since the program was created in 1958. As such, effective immediately, new certification levels for the RIAA Digital Single Gold & Platinum Program will be:
Gold = 500,000
Platinum = 1,000,000
Multi-Platinum = 2,000,000 (in increments of 1,000,000)
The new certification levels for the RIAA Digital Gold & Platinum program are effective immediately. All pending requests for digital single certification will be completed under the original certification levels and then adjusted to the proper category under the new system. In the next week, all digital singles currently certified at Gold, Platinum, 2x Platinum, 3x Platinum, and 4x Platinum will be converted to Gold status. All 5x - 9x Platinum digital singles will be converted to Platinum status.
Edited by Brian W. on 20 June 2006 at 9:37pm
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EdisonLite
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| Posted: 20 June 2006 at 11:38pm | IP Logged
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<Many singles will actually be LOSING their Platinum status. >
It's a good thing they're not taking away a single's GOLD status. Otherwise, the RIAA would have to go into everyone's homes and remove their gold plaques from the wall.
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Grant
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| Posted: 21 June 2006 at 1:11am | IP Logged
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It makes no sense to me...
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torcan
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| Posted: 23 June 2006 at 3:26pm | IP Logged
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EdisonLite wrote:
<Many singles will actually be LOSING their Platinum status. >
It's a good thing they're not taking away a single's GOLD status. Otherwise, the RIAA would have to go into everyone's homes and remove their gold plaques from the wall. |
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It used to be that sales of 1,000,000 were a gold single, and 2,000,000 was platinum (back in the good-old days of vinyl). Since singles sold a lot less during the latter half of the '80s, there were fewer certifications and the criteria was actually cut in half at the beginning of 1989.
What I didn't like about that was labels were free to go back and re-certify old hits that originally missed the criteria. This created a lot of confusion because some gold hits only had sales of a half-million and others were a million - and there was no way to tell which was which. What they should have done at that time was only allow singles released from that point forward to be certified at the new levels.
My 2 cents anyway.
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 23 June 2006 at 7:05pm | IP Logged
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I agree, Torcan. It's very confusing. That's why I suggested to Paul Haney that Record Research's books come up with a new symbol system to indicate how many copies a single is certified for, not "gold" or "platinum," though I don't know if he ever saw the post.
Plus, I wish the RIAA would audit all their former certifications, because I suspect that at least 25% of all singles certified as shipping 1/2 a million or 1 million did not actually sell that many at retail. The RIAA claims its awards are based on shipments MINUS returns, and are audited for "the life of the release," whatever that means.
However, when Sony recertified some of its previous gold singles for its major artists at the new platinum standard of one million, not ALL those previous golds were upped to platinum. I can only assume those that weren't did not sell a million at retail. Examples:
Michael Jackson -- Billie Jean, Say Say Say, Beat It, Don't Stop Til You Get Enough, and Rock With You were all upped to platinum, but Girl is Mine and I Just Can't Stop Loving You never were. (And at that time the Thriller single was certified as platinum, which for some reason had never been certified at all before that.)
Streisand - The Main Event and Guilty singles were never upped to platinum, though all the rest of her previous gold singles were.
Billy Joel - Uptown Girl and Just the Way You Are were never upped to platinum, but It's Still Rock N Roll and My Life were.
Elton John - Over half of his gold singles were not upped to platinum -- Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Lucy in the Sky, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, Mama Can't Buy You Love, Little Jeannie, and Don't Go Breaking My Heart. Only Crocodile Rock, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Bennie and the Jets, Philadelphia Freedom, and Island Girl were made platinum. And of course Candle in the Wind.
Edited by Brian W. on 23 June 2006 at 7:06pm
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torcan
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| Posted: 25 June 2006 at 1:27pm | IP Logged
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Brian W. wrote:
Plus, I wish the RIAA would audit all their former certifications, because I suspect that at least 25% of all singles certified as shipping 1/2 a million or 1 million did not actually sell that many at retail. The RIAA claims its awards are based on shipments MINUS returns, and are audited for "the life of the release," whatever that means.
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It always confused me reading Billboard in the '80s and sometimes hearing about singles from the '60s that "have just been certified gold". Since singles didn't stay in print very long on their original labels, I guess the RIAA must have included "oldie series" sales when certifying them. I doubt that original singles would have still been in enough stores after all that time and sales would have trickled to a million that slowly.
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EdisonLite
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| Posted: 25 June 2006 at 2:52pm | IP Logged
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Actually, that isn't the way the RIAA certifications work. My understanding is that the labels pay a fee to the RIAA to see if the album or single has gone gold. They get a Yes or No answer. If the answer is No, it doesn't mean that the RIAA keeps tabulating every trickling record sale until it reaches gold/platinum years or decades later. But the label has the right to pay RIAA again (even years later) to determine the current sales to date. Often times this occurs when an artist's 'greatest hits' is coming out and it adds to its promotion to announce that all these other singles actually went gold/platinum.
And I, too, don't understand how a single's sales can increase once the record is out of print. But like you said, maybe they are tabulating oldies 45s at that point.
Edited by EdisonLite on 25 June 2006 at 2:53pm
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 25 June 2006 at 2:59pm | IP Logged
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torcan wrote:
Since singles didn't stay in print very long on their original labels, I guess the RIAA must have included "oldie series" sales when certifying them. |
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I think back in those days singles actually stayed in print for quite some time. But certifications years after the fact are just a matter of record companies bothering to have a single certified for the first time, not that it wasn't eligible back when the song was released.
But also, if you look at the certification dates, most singles are certified around the time they peak on the chart, often even before, so if it's a big hit it is quite possible there could be another 1/2 milllion to a million shipped after the initial certification.
Edited by Brian W. on 25 June 2006 at 3:10pm
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 30 June 2006 at 1:19pm | IP Logged
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Since we addressed in this thread singles that shipped a million and didn't sell a million at retail, I recently discovered a site (UKMix.org) where a couple members post SoundScan stats... Did you know that Michael & Janet's "Scream," though it is Platinum for shipping a million, only scanned about 700,000 copies at retail? But "You are Not Alone" actually did scan over a million.
Another member posted year-end SoundScan singles charts for everything that scanned over 1/2 million in that year. Here's the link. But keep in mind, they are CALENDAR YEAR charts, so a single that sold, say, 600,000 in one year could have sold another 400,000 the next year, but the second year wouldn't be listed. (But the 700,000 stat I listed for "Scream" is up to date from a recent post.)
http://www.ukmix.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18015&highlight= puff+daddy+singles+soundscan
A couple surprises were some singles that scanned a million but their record companies never bothered to certify them Platinum: Sarah MacLachlen's "Adia," Meredith Brooks' "Bitch," and 112's "Only You."
Edited by Brian W. on 30 June 2006 at 1:34pm
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Topic: RIAA raises download cert. requirements
