How RIAA Gold and Platinum certifications count streams

A Gold or Platinum record in the U.S. is a certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It means an album or a song has reached a set number of units, and since 2016 for albums and 2013 for singles, those units can come from on-demand streams as well as sales. Gold is 500,000 units, Platinum is 1 million, Multi-Platinum starts at 2 million and rises in steps of 1 million, and Diamond is 10 million.

How streams become units

For albums, the RIAA counts album sales, song sales and on-demand audio or video streams together, using a fixed formula: 1,500 on-demand streams equal 10 track sales, which equal one album sale. For singles, downloads and on-demand streams both count, and 150 on-demand streams equal one download.

Streams count whether the listener pays or not. The RIAA accepts on-demand streams from services authorized by and reporting to the record labels, “whether paid for by the consumer through a subscription or free to the consumer through ad-supported services.” For video, only official label or company videos count; user-generated uploads do not.

A worked example shows the scale. The figures here are hypothetical. An album with 200,000 album sales, 1 million song sales and 300 million on-demand streams would have 200,000 units from albums, 100,000 from songs and 200,000 from streams: 500,000 in all, enough for Gold. A single would need 75 million on-demand streams, or a mix of streams and downloads adding up to 500,000 units, to go Gold.

The two formulas weigh a stream very differently. A stream counts ten times as much toward a single as toward an album: 150 streams make a single unit, but it takes 1,500 to make an album unit. A song streamed 150 million times would have 1 million single units, enough for Platinum, but would add only 100,000 units to its album. The same streams can lift a single much further than the album it appears on.

Streams now feature in almost every award. The RIAA says nearly all the awards it certifies today include both sales and streams at the Gold, Platinum and Multi-Platinum levels.

Certifications are not automatic

The RIAA does not track every release and hand out awards. “Certifications are not automatic,” it says: the requester, such as a record label, must supply sales and streaming data for an audit, submitted through the RIAA's Quick Request Portal. The RIAA says its third-party auditing firm has reviewed all applications for more than 40 years.

Because an award depends on someone asking for it, a title can pass a threshold well before it is certified, and a long-running hit can be certified at a higher level only when a new request is audited.

What counts, and what does not

• Only U.S. activity counts. Export sales outside the U.S. are excluded, though sales to U.S. military post exchanges can be included.
• Physical albums and tracks count from 30 days after release; digital ones count from the release date.
• Pre-orders count only after the album is released and the buyer receives a copy.
• Albums bundled with concert tickets or merchandise count only if sold at a premium of at least $6 per album over the standalone price, and the other product must be on sale separately.
• Promotional radio and press copies, cut-outs, inventory sell-offs and surplus sales are excluded.

Latin awards use lower thresholds

The RIAA's Premios de Oro y Platino cover albums and singles with more than 50% Spanish-language lyrics, using the same 1,500-stream album formula. The levels are lower: Oro is 30,000 units, Platino 60,000, Multi-Platino 120,000 and then every 60,000, and Diamante 600,000.

How the rules changed

The first Gold song certification went to Perry Como's “Catch a Falling Star” in 1958, and the first Gold album to the cast album of “Oklahoma!” the same year. The RIAA added a Digital Single Award for downloads in 2004, added on-demand streams to that award in 2013 and updated its Album Award to include song sales and on-demand streams in 2016.

The album change came in a turning-point year. The RIAA notes that in 2016, streaming services generated more revenue for the music business, $3.9 billion, than album and singles sales, $3.5 billion, for the first time.

What a certification tells you

A certification is a cumulative U.S. milestone, not a chart position. It does not say how quickly a title sold or how it ranks against others in a given week, and it says nothing about sales outside the U.S. Because streams convert at 1,500 per album unit, an older album that keeps being streamed can keep adding units long after release.

Streaming services' own figures show how much listening there is to convert: Spotify reported 788 million monthly users in its latest quarter.