RIAA equates online listening to sales of albums

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 16 years after the first release of Napster and 15 years after the advent of iTunes, sat down at arithmetic and brought out new rules according to which performers of musical works will be awarded for their frequency of reproduction.

Historically, performers (and their record companies) were awarded for the sale of albums. The album, sold in 500,000 copies, became gold, in a million - platinum, more than two million - multi-platinum. These statistics were kept in the era of vinyl, audio cassettes and CD. Now streaming tracks are included in this statistic.

After a long sitting at the calculators, the RIAA has developed the following rules: 1500 listening to audio or video over the Internet equals sales of 10 tracks or one album. RIAA also share paid downloads of songs and streaming them on request - 150 streams are equivalent to 1 download.
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The RIAA has already selected 17 nominees who will receive awards calculated according to the new scheme. Among them - Michael Jackson's album "Thriller", which has become multiplatinum already 32-fold.

Gold and platinum awards were invented in 1958 to assess the popularity of artists and introduce the standard for measuring the commercial success of their records. Over the past 58 years, RIAA has been awarded about 30,000 certificates on the number of albums and singles sales. A full list of nominees can be explored on the special page of the RIAA website .