Recording Industry Association of America starts counting on-demand streaming audio and video toward certifying albums as gold or platinum sellers
The RIAA Finally Bows to Streaming, Making 17 Artists' Albums Go Gold and Platinum — This is huge. — Call it the Anti effect, or just call it getting hip to the times.
Context & Ripple Effects
The RIAA's certification system had been measuring an industry its own data said no longer existed as a sales business: streaming had already eclipsed US CD sales in 2014, and by mid-2015 the trade group was reporting streaming revenues up 23.2% while downloads fell. By counting on-demand audio and video plays toward gold and platinum, the RIAA is aligning its awards with where the money actually moved.
The immediate proof is retroactive: 17 artists' albums get certified on the strength of streams they already accumulated. The change also sets up the RIAA's own reporting arc — within weeks it would confirm streaming out-earned downloads for full-year 2015, making this certification update a lagging acknowledgment rather than a leading one.
First-order effects
- Seventeen artists gain gold or platinum plaques overnight from catalog streams, giving labels and artists marketing assets earned without a single additional sale.
Second-order effects
- Labels now have a direct incentive to steer releases toward on-demand platforms first, since stream counts feed certifications; services like Spotify and Apple Music become part of the award math, not just the revenue line.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, album-era metrics give way to consumption-based ones across the industry — chart methodology, royalty accounting, and artist contracts all re-basing around streams, which the RIAA's later reports showing streaming at 75% of recorded-music revenue bear out.
The trend: Music-industry measurement is migrating from units sold to streams consumed, with the RIAA's certification rules following its revenue data rather than anticipating it.