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Music

What the RIAA's Announcement That They're Factoring Free Streams into Gold and Platinum Certifications Actually Means

From now on, every 100 digital streams of a song or album equals one sale. Here's what that changes.

Yesterday, in a super-duper-crazy-ass-out-of-nowhere-seeming move, the RIAA announced that it would start factoring in on-demand streams into its Gold, Platinum, and Diamond certification metrics. This includes, among others, Spotify and YouTube streams. On first blush, this seems like a fundamental restructuring of the way in which the RIAA functions, almost a tacit admission that we've given up on selling actual music and "Gold" and "Platinum" are now merely marketing terms used to push merchandise, add fodder to licensing decks, and sell concert tickets. They're not. The RIAA is actually making a calculated decision that's smart as hell, a savvy move that will boost album sales way less than people might initially think and help reflect revenue streams based on the way we consume singles today.

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Upon first blush, this seems like a way to inflate RIAA certifications just for shits and giggles. But if you check the language of the announcement, you'll notice that every 100 streams of a song or album counts the same as one actual sale. So ultimately, this won't artificially inflate album sales or cause some random dude with a hit on Livemixtapes can go Platinum with just as much ease as Justin Timberlake, but it will mean that songs like "Gangnam Style" and "Harlem Shake" will probably end up being Platinum singles because of the amount of times people have streamed them on YouTube. That's great. It reflects the way people consume music today, and means that people's music video budgets are going to get a bit bigger, which is fun if you like cool music videos. It also goes a bit of the way to accounting for revenue when your album, gets bootlegged and uploaded to YouTube.

What this change will also create is a greater distinction between the terms "mixtape" and "free album," something rappers in particular have been fast and loose with in the past few years. For now, services such as Livemixtapes and Datpiff don't count towards RIAA certification. Let's consider something like Danny Brown's XXX, probably the best free musical project in recent memory. It featured original beats and was released by Fool's Gold, but was given away as a free download (and is on Datpiff and Livemixtapes) because Brown didn't have the popularity to command an audience to buy his music, but he had the name recognition, crazy look, and buzz to convince people to give him a shot. Because of the album's quality, Fool's Gold has been able to move merchandise as well as sell vinyl copies of XXX. Additionally, the record is on Spotify, which means that his label has already been able to monetize streams of it. If his label is making money off of the music itself, it's an album. So why shouldn't people streaming it on a service that provides his label count towards its RIAA certification? Meanwhile, if you're rapping over recycled beats and your shit's not on Spotify, you've still gotta grind until you can get that plaque.

Another possible outcome of this new system is it will, in a small way, disincentivize the shady record industry practice of pricing album downloads at $2.99 or something on Amazon in order to beef up their first-week sales and say their album went Gold the first week out. The logic here is if you get enough people streaming the album you'll get your certification anyways. Hopefully, it won't end crazy stunts like the one Taylor Swift's record label recently pulled, where if you ordered a pizza from Papa John's they threw in a free copy of Red. That's no less shady a way to make your album go Gold, but at least Papa John's is tasty and there is no way someone could ever stream a pizza.

Drew Millard wants to wish a happy birthday to Luke Winkie. He's on Twitter - @drewmillard