Thriller is now 32x Platinum due to the RIAA's new rules

respect77 said:
Spotify is free too if you put up with commercials. You can update to Premium by paying for a couple of extras and ad-free service.
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Did not know that as it's not available in my country. Thanks.
 
An article hit my newsfeed last night about Rihanna's new album sold less than 500 copies, yet it was certified platinum by the RIAA. Basically, she was paid an advance, and the record company gave exclusive rights to Tidal to download one million copies of the album FREE-which people did right away.

I didn't understand what they were talking about until I started reading this thread. It's just really wrong-Billboard and Nielsen say they aren't going along with it-so I think we just going to see a lot more confusing charts and stats in the future (even more than we've been seeing the past few years, if that's possible).
 
^ I have heard so much confusing info about the sales of that Rihanna album that I don't know what to think. This morning I have seen a projection that said it is expected to sell around 125,000 so it probably will be #1. (Yes, that's enough for #1 these days...) That's very different than the 500 copies claim, and frankly, sounds more realistic. Free giveaways or not, 500 copies do not sound realistic for a Rihanna album. We will find out next Monday when Billboard publishes its chart, I guess.

As for these new rules, I have been thinking about it some more today and one other thing: on Spotify maybe they can seperate to which album to count a song, to its original studio album or a greatest hits collection. I'm not sure, but maybe. But how it will be on YouTube? There songs are not linked to any album, so will they be counted to their original studio album that they appeared on in every case? I guess, they should be.

It's just a weird, confusing system, IMO.
 
respect77 said:
^ I have heard so much confusing info about the sales of that Rihanna album that I don't know what to think. This morning I have seen a projection that said it is expected to sell around 125,000 so it probably will be #1. (Yes, that's enough for #1 these days...) That's very different than the 500 copies claim, and frankly, sounds more realistic. Free giveaways or not, 500 copies do not sound realistic for a Rihanna album. We will find out next Monday when Billboard publishes its chart, I guess.
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The album is really bad so it's possible that the sales will be very low. Not 500 copies low, but much lower than they expected to be. Also for the first week of sale the album was not available on itunes or anywhere else. Just on Tidal. And on Tidal limited amount of copies were given away for free if you completed some game on Rihanna's web page. So that free downloads will not be counted on Billboard. So Tidal streams and youtube streams of the first single (which also sucks) will be the majority of her "album sales". Based on that I'm projecting very low sales and not a #1 album.
 
OnirMJ said:
The album is really bad so it's possible that the sales will be very low. Not 500 copies low, but much lower than they expected to be. Also for the first week of sale the album was not available on itunes or anywhere else. Just on Tidal. And on Tidal limited amount of copies were given away for free if you completed some game on Rihanna's web page. So that free downloads will not be counted on Billboard. So Tidal streams and youtube streams of the first single (which also sucks) will be the majority of her "album sales". Based on that I'm projecting very low sales and not a #1 album.
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Well, that is a matter of taste, I guess. I am not a Rihanna fan, never have been. I heard the album and it did not make me a fan either, but her fans as much as I saw on other forums really like the album. Some actually say it's her best album. People do acknowlege that it's a change from her usual direction so it may not be as appealing to the masses as her music in the past. I cannot really judge that because her style, past or this present one, never appealed to me.

Now is its first week and the album IS available on iTunes and is constantly at #1 for days now. I think it was only not available on the first day or so. We will see if it makes it to #1 or not.
 
I have not paid too much attention to the stats lately-I only started paying attention to them again in 2009 when Michael died-and all of his albums were charting again, but not counting. Then they revised the rules again, and again, and again-so I've lost track.

The 500 number comes from the fact that she released the album on a Thursday, the last day of the week to be counted? Does that sound right for one of these charts? I don't know.
 
respect77 said:
But how it will be on YouTube? There songs are not linked to any album, so will they be counted to their original studio album that they appeared on in every case? I guess, they should be.
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They should be linked. When a song is Content ID'd, in the description it'll mention the song name with a link to purchase it off iTunes or Google Play. Clicking on that should reveal which version they linked to. Not entirely sure how accurate it would be (as in whether it'd link to the original album version or a single edit on a compilation), but I guess that'd depend on which version the uploader uses. You could probably go YouTubing for a bit and have a look for yourself. That's how I imagine they would distinguish it for Billboard/the RIAA. If a song isn't linked, then Content ID has missed it so it won't count, but if it went viral there's a good chance the label would step in and monetize the video, thus linking their song to it.

Anyhow for Rihanna, I think I read that Samsung had purchased x amount of albums to give it away for free (on Tidal I think), and as they were technically purchased, they count towards her sales. If that is true it's not entirely fair imho, otherwise artists can just get in deals with companies who will buy their records first week to guarantee #1 place. The new album is alright though, I like a few songs and my friends say it grows on you, but I've only played it once or twice.

EDIT: I was wrong (thankfully). On my phone so I'll just copy and paste Wikipedia: In the United States, Anti received a platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) two days after its release as a result of Samsung purchasing one million copies of the album in advance that were then given away as a free download, part of the $25 million deal signed by Rihanna in 2015.[SUP][87][/SUP] The album debuted at No. 27 on the Billboard 200 on February 1, 2016.[SUP][88][/SUP] Although over 1.4 million copies were downloaded from Tidal, Billboard and Nielsen Music did not recognize the count of the sales, because they were distributed by Samsung.[SUP][89][/SUP]
 
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OnirMJ said:
The album is really bad so it's possible that the sales will be very low. Not 500 copies low, but much lower than they expected to be. Also for the first week of sale the album was not available on itunes or anywhere else. Just on Tidal.
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It was released for free on Thursday, then release to the usual digital outlets the following day. It's not out on CD until this Friday.
 
HIStoric said:
Anyhow for Rihanna, I think I read that Samsung had purchased x amount of albums to give it away for free, and as they were technically purchased, they count towards her sales on Billboard. If that is true it's not entirely fair imho, otherwise artists can just get in deals with companies who will buy their records first week to guarantee #1 place. The new album is alright though, I like a few songs and my friends say it grows on you, but I've only played it once or twice.
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As far as I know they count towards RIAA (so RIAA already certified it Platinum) but not towards Billboard.

Thanks for the rest. I'll check out the info on YT.

Edit: I did. It's a mess. A lot of videos are not linked to any album and then there is a lot of mess up too, eg. in MJ's case TDCAU is linked to Thriller 25 and so on. On the other hand there are two versions of Thriller (long, short) and Beat It (remastered, not remastered) on the official VEVO channel and only one of each is linked to the Thriller album. I hope they actually have better methods to track stuff because what is on the surface is pretty messy.
 
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Reading this reminded me of this for some reason.




This is very unfair to the artists who came before the era of internet streaming and it feels like some sort of attempt to beat Michael's record.
Why not create a separate format of achievements for the artists that now uses the internet to sell their music? God forbid they outsell Thriller with these idiotic new rules. You just know how people would boast about it and knock Michael down disrespecting him once again.
 
Guys, not everything is a conspiracy against Michael Jackson god dayum.
 
MJ Ice Cream said:
Reading this reminded me of this for some reason.




This is very unfair to the artists who came before the era of internet streaming and it feels like some sort of attempt to beat Michael's record.
Why not create a separate format of achievements for the artists that now uses the internet to sell their music? God forbid they outsell Thriller with these idiotic new rules. You just know how people would boast about it and knock Michael down disrespecting him once again.
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How would anyone outsell Thriller because of these new rules? Sales numbers will remain sales numbers. Gold and Platinum albums are just awards, and RIAA can award whatever they like with it, if they want they can award the number of farts an artist does a day or something, but they do not affect the actual sales numbers which will remain what they factually are.

The decision has nothing to do with Michael Jackson (in fact, as you have seen they were quick to update Thriller's certifications according to the new rules). It has all to do with the struggling record industry where there are only a handful of artists who can go Platinum or even Gold any more. An alternative solution could have been something that other countries did: to reduce the number of sold records required for Gold or Platinum status. For example they could have said: from now on 250,000 will be Gold and 500,000 will be Platinum. Or less. Such changes were made in other countries over time. This also would result in people having more Gold or Platinum records with less sales than old time acts. But the number of Gold, Platinum records does not really matter when talking about sales. Sales numbers will remain sales numbers and if someone is interested in that they will look up the actual sales numbers, not how many Gold or Platinum someone has.

I don't necessarily like these new rules because it does change the meaning of album certifications and I think they just should have a seperate chart for streaming, but it's not a conspiracy against MJ.

(BTW, re. Rihanna, she is projected to sell 105-115k first week and indeed open at #1. http://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=299533 . As you can see even on these charts they give two numbers for each artist: the first is the actual sales number, the second is sales+streaming. Billboard does the same as well.)
 
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Its not like the old days where u went into wollies and picked up your bad cassette. Streaming should only count if you physically pay for the album or single download.
 
I agree if somebody buys the single or album thru iTunes or something.

But Spotify and YouTube are like today's radio and MTV. Did the RIAA ever count radio or videos before?
Definitely should be separated.
 
"But Spotify and YouTube are like today's radio and MTV."

That's a perfect analogy, Barbee
 
criteria

MJ Ice Cream said:
This is very unfair to the artists who came before the era of internet streaming and it feels like some sort of attempt to beat Michael's record.
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There's not much difference in this than what Billboard has done to their charting criteria. Lil' Wayne has passed up Elvis Presley as having the most songs to hit the Top 100 singles. A record Elvis has had for decades. James Brown was in 2nd place after Elvis. I think Drake is about to pass up Elvis too. The thing about this is that a lot of the Lil Wayne & Drake songs are not their own like Elvis' & James'. They're guest acts on songs by others. There's a lot of collaborations in modern rap music, and rappers also feature on pop, dance, R&B songs, and even country songs more recently. There's also a new sub-genre in country called "hick hop". But hick hop is still underground for the most part. I think this is probably because the topics of the songs don't have widespread appeal, such as rural hobbies like muddin'. There also tends to be rebel flag imagery (for Southern pride) in the music videos, which is not going to get a lot of US mainstream media attention today. Cowboy Troy is probably the most known of the hick hop acts.
 
Cheating cheating cheating. And they dont stop. Another new way to cheat, to manipulate charts and sales. They began with these mp3 download, these are not physical sales. And now streams. :busted:
I am waiting for the news when they saying that someone broke the record for best selling album. Like this fake cheating story with perry^^. When its a fact that BAD is the only album with 5 number one hits. Michael Jackson did that with physical sales. perry not, and they used methots that have nothing to do with real charts. Very manipulative, airplay, download, re-releases... she did not achieved what Michael Jackson achieved.
 
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Excellent! As well it should be...it's a fantastic album and worthy of every award given to it ^.^
 
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