In some music market like Spain or Italy (for what I know) certifications standards for albums and singles have been adjusted in the years to make them more representative of the total amount of the yearly sales of a market.

So in Italy in 2005 an album was platinum after 100K copies sold, now it needs 50K. 

 

In most of the big markets like the Usa, the Uk, Australia etc.. certifications are the same as 50 years ago.

Why?. 

I saw Future Nostalgia by Dua lipa in Australia is just gold after 159 weeks (!!) in the top 50. How is this representative of how big the album has been and its total chart run?. Right now it should be like 3XP at least. If sales became lower and lower why the goal for just 1XP is always the same and you need 2 years in the top 10 to reach it?.

 

Certifications should show how bigger an album has been and you should get its chart run just by the certifications. If you see two albums are 7XP you know they have been similar successfull in their era, even if one sold 1M copies (when the market was the double bigger) and the other sold 500K. 

If some moderate successfull album from 20 years ago it's 4X platinum with just one year on the charts and a modern hit album is gold after almost 4 years on the charts what's the point of certifications as a "symbol" of popularity and chart runs?.

 

What do you think about it?. 

 

 

 

Yes they should be adjusted and standardised across countries. Singles cerification thresholds should be increased and albums lowered for most countries.

Either adjust it or add Silver certifications like the UK

Streaming kinda ruined everything so yes

Not only that, but all time charts need to start weighting sales based on release date. A song selling one million units in 2003 was much more of a big deal than a track reaching 1M sps points in 2023 for example.

Yes, and when they started counting digital singles in the mid-00s, they should've weighted them differently from physical singles.

Well, it depends on the country. Here in Mexico the last adjustment was in 2020. Before that year you needed 60k to reach platinum, now you need 140k because streaming took over and basically revived the music industry in here

Yes, streaming has inflated certifications a ton

Yes but they should focus on how many people stream it rather than how much they do cause right now you can be a little bit of nobody and appear as a superstar because of your dedicated fanbase 

Australia changed it wdym...the 2 biggest songs are lessened in value compared to the rest of the album 💀

1 hour ago, Black Jesus said:

Yes, streaming has inflated certifications a ton

agree... 

Just now, ninetiesceline said:

agree... 

It has inflated singles certifications but albums have deflated if anything.

It depends on priorities. In Italy, certifications are automatic and many artists buy themselves the physical certification plaques, so FIMI makes money off of that. In the US, RIAA wants labels to pay for $350 online certifications, so it's in their interest to keep the thresholds low and easy to reach. Same for most other countries--Brazil is the most ridiculous one, with a Gold single only taking 10 million streams (audio or video).

59 minutes ago, Axelios said:

It has inflated singles certifications but albums have deflated if anything.

+ Streaming kinda exposed which artists are single/album artists 

6 minutes ago, Cloröx said:

+ Streaming kinda exposed which artists are single/album artists 

That's true too. In the past a lot of people were "forced" to buy an album to listen to one or two hit songs. Now we know exactly where the interest of public is.

8 hours ago, Axelios said:

It has inflated singles certifications but albums have deflated if anything.

The double counting is the issue.

 

A single counts for an album and a single.

 

That wasn't the case during the casette/vinyl/cd or digital era.

 

I like UK or one of the countries where all other streams except singles are counted for the album.

 

So the certification would have to wait until the end of the era or some kind of adjustment would be made if a song turns into a single. That's the only confusing part for me.