RIAA Changes It’s Streaming Policy. Many Albums Sales Are Updated To Platinum And Gold.

Just days after Rihanna’s ANTI almost instantaneously went platinum, the Recording Industry Association of America announced it would now factor streaming data in the equation determining whether an album has reached gold or platinum status. “Modernizing our Album Award to include music streaming is the next logical step in the continued evolution of Gold & Platinum Awards,” said CEO and Chairman, Cary Sherman. “Doing so enables RIAA to fully reward the success of artists’ albums today.”

With this decision came an immediate upgrade to 17 albums who owe part of their success to streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music. The list is about as diverse as could be expected, with acts ranging from hip-hop, country, and indie. Notably, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly and Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradise attained platinum certifications. The Weeknd and Sam Hunt both received multi-platinum certifications for their latest studio albums, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller broke even more records, moving from 30X platinum to 32.

Check out the entire list of albums that got the RIAA upgrade treatment below, and see if any of your favorites made the cut.

Got the drop on Complex . . .

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s