The Recording Industry Association of America's 55-year-old barometer for measuring an artist's or group's commercial success continues to evolve. Just weeks after altering its Gold & Platinum Awards Program to include on-demand audio and video streams, the RIAA this week has made another tweak to "modernize" the certification process.
Digital sales of an album will now count toward the certification requirements beginning on the album's release date — instead of the 30-day wait time that was initially instituted to accurately tally physical sales (CDs, cassettes, vinyl and other formats).
The RIAA admits Jay-Z's marketing stunt with Samsung for the July 4 release of Magna Carta Holy Grail influenced the rule change. The rapper is giving away one million copies of the album, purchased by Samsung, to one million owners of the Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note II. Those Samsung users must download an app to snag a copy.
"It is a novel and creative marketing move and it has rightly stimulated a healthy conversation about the sale's meaning and implications for the modern music business," Liz Kennedy, the RIAA's director of communications and Gold & Platinum Program, said in an announcement.
Mashable has requested download stats from Samsung, but the company isn't sharing any yet.
Theoretically, Jay-Z's album could be certified platinum on its July 4 release date under the updated rules.
Kennedy says the 30-day rule "no longer makes sense," but it once served the purpose to give brick-and-mortar retailers time to return any unsold albums.
She notes the updated albums sales requirements now align with the RIAA's rules for sales of singles:
When we first created the Digital Single Award in 2004, we elected not to impose any 30-day rule because there are very few digital returns. According to our auditing firm, digital returns on average account for less than two percent of sales included in reports provided by the labels for certification – most digital retailer Terms of Use/Service allow users to return products only under limited circumstances. Also at the time in 2004, sales of digital albums were virtually non-existent and accounted for a small fraction of overall digital sales. Fast forward a decade and that's obviously no longer the case.
After this week's update, the Gold & Platinum Awards Program takes into account sales of cassette tapes, CDs, digital tracks, digital albums, ringtones as well as (since May) on-demand streams. For audio streams, the RIAA looks at numbers from MOG, Muve Music, Rdio, Rhapsody, Slacker, Spotify, Xbox Music and other services. For video streams, the RIAA monitors MTV.com, VEVO, Yahoo! Music, YouTube and more.
Kennedy didn't hide the fact the music landscape is evolving more every day:
Not only do we believe it's sensible and logical to align digital album rules with those we have maintained for digital singles since the program's inception, we also consider today's move in line with our larger efforts to modernize the G&P Program to reflect the new music marketplace. In May we announced the integration of on-demand streams to the program to more broadly recognize online demand for songs. The reality is that how fans consume music is changing, the music business is changing as labels and artists partner with a breathtaking array of new technology services, and the industry's premier award recognizing artists' commercial achievement should similarly keep pace. In short, we're continuing to move the 55-year-old program forward and it's a good day when music sales diversification and innovative strategies meet the RIAA's time-tested, gold standard requisites for certification.
Do you think this was a well-needed rule update for the RIAA? Or was it long overdue?
Image via JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
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