Great News For Music Artists. Welcome To The Digital Age Music Biz!
Washington/Los Angeles – The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced the integration of streams to its historic Gold & Platinum (G&P) Program, the industry’s premier award for recognizing artistic achievement in the marketplace. On-demand audio and/or video song streams will now be counted towards the 500,000 (Gold), 1,000,000 (Platinum) and 2,000,000 plus (multi-Platinum) thresholds required for G&P’s Digital Single Award certification.
*The new certification approach, includes the formula of 100 streams being equivalent to one download, is an approximate barometer of comparative consumer activity; the financial value of streams.
*This includes streams from on-demand services like iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, Slacker, Xbox Music and others, plus video streaming services like Youtube, MTV.com, VEVO, Yahoo! Music, and more.
This new expansion of the G&P Program – the approach, methodology and formula – was the culmination of a year-long project by the RIAA, led by Sherman, and a variety of label marketing, business and data analysis executives, in which the RIAA examined comprehensive information comparing data on digital downloads to similar data on on-demand audio and video streams. The RIAA also closely consulted with NARM/digitalmusic.org, many digital music services, artist managers and industry leaders. It is important to note the new certification approach, including the formula of 100 streams being equivalent to one download, is an approximate barometer of comparative consumer activity; the financial value of streams and downloads were not factored into the equation.
Jim Donio, President of music business association NARM commented, “Getting streams included in the RIAA’s Gold and Platinum Awards certification has been a top agenda item for all of the member music services who participate in our digitalmusic.org Music Subscription Work Group. They are especially pleased to see these collaborative efforts come to fruition, and for music fan’s streaming activity be measured and recognized by the G&P Awards, one of the most important milestones in an artist’s career. Over the past few years, our members have also worked on related initiatives such as the creation of the first On Demand Songs Chart with Billboard and Nielsen, and we will continue to work with the RIAA and others as our industry evolves in the digital era.”
