RIAA Changes Rules to Album Certifications

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The RIAA announced yesterday that streaming will now be included upon determining album sales, making Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, Big Sean's Dark Sky Paradise, and The Weekend's Beauty Behind the Madness all certified platinum. TDE CEO responds via Twitter "we don't stand behind the RIAA BS" and I agree. For those of you who don't know, originally in order to qualify as having a platinum selling album, 1 million units need to be sold. A number of streams on an album are no where similar to how many physical copies are bought. The RIAA says 1,500 song or video streams will be equivalent to ten track sales or one album sale.

Streaming is free for the user there for if one person is a Kendrick listener, that one person could possibly stream the album at the least 365 times in one year without costing them a cent. Now if that same person bought the album the odds of them repurchasing the same album are slim to none. Mathematically if about 4 people listen to a song off the album once a day for the entire year that is now equivalent to about $20. So according to these guidelines if a little over 600 people stream or listen to a song or video once a day for a year the artist would reach the platinum qualifications. However if over 600 people bought the album once for $20 it would only be 12,000 sales, which doesn't scrape the surface of a million sales. So over all this new system of certified platinum will not show an accurate fan base, because most people listen to the music that they're accustomed to multiple times and if they're doing it for free, it doesn't prove how many people actually deem your music worthy enough to purchase. I will look deeper inside the policy in order to verify this accuracy and maybe if it's limited to a number on each user, but if it's not than getting platinum will be a piece of cake. 


This will eventually lower the value of the certification, because of how easily accessible it is. I'm with Top Dawg "no cheat codes to platinum." Artists are still receiving organic sales meeting the original criteria to gain a certified platinum credit, so it’s not an impossible task. Drake and J. Cole both was certified platinum hip hop artist last year without counting the streams. Kendrick sold 750,000 units with his album, so I know he would rather receive the original platinum credentials being that he’s already close to meeting them. Now, it feels more like a fluke win oppose to a real win. This is like when you’re in the midst of a heated close game and you feel like you’re going to win regardless, but someone accidentally pulls out the chord before the winner is determined. Smh I hope the RIAA reexamines the rule and change it back to the its original; 1 million sales equals a platinum album period. 

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