THE BPI’s famous Platinum, Gold and Silver Awards Programme – which recognises achievement in respect of sales of albums, singles and long-form music video in the UK – is to include audio streaming data in its album certifications from this week.
The first albums benefitting from the incorporation of streaming will be announced via the BPI’s regular Twitter update this weekend.
Singles certifications in the UK have included streaming plays since July 2014 and this announcement brings albums in line.
The BPI Platinum, Gold and Silver Awards Programme will adopt the same approach and criteria that the Official Charts are using to calculate how streams contribute to an album’s sales performance. See Notes to Editors.
The inclusion of this new data has been backdated to the beginning of 2015, resulting in a higher than usual number of titles this week receiving new or upgraded certifications, including albums by artists such as Nicki Minaj, Placebo and Fall Out Boy.
The move to include streaming plays in the BPI Awards for albums reflects a significant shift in the way music is consumed by fans – in 2014, some 14.8bn audio streams were served across platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, Google Play and Rdio, up by 98 per cent on 2013’s total. Streaming accounted for 16.5 per cent of industry revenue in 2014 and is expected to grow yet further in 2015, with over 475 million audio streams now taking place every week.
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Enquiries
Gennaro Castaldo gennaro.castaldo@bpi.co.uk 020 7803 1326 / 07801 194 139
Notes to Editors
How the incorporation of streams is calculated
To reflect the difference in weight between streaming and purchasing, the BPI Platinum, Gold and Silver Awards Programme will utilise Official Charts Company data, which takes the 12 most-streamed tracks from the standard version of an album, with the top two songs down-weighted in line with the average of the rest. The total of these streams will be divided by 1,000 and added to the physical and digital sales of the album (the 1,000 ratio representing 100 streams as an equivalent for one track, and ten tracks for one album).
About the BPI Certified Awards
From Paul McCartney to Madonna, and from Bastille to Sam Smith, the BPI’s iconic Platinum, Gold and Silver Certified Awards have long been presented to music artists to celebrate milestones of achievement for both singles and albums. Originally introduced in 1973, more than 14,000 awards have been issued to date during their illustrious 42-year history.
From 2010, every BPI Certified Award disc boasts an individually-numbered and unique BPI hologram to authenticate each Certified Award and enhance the look of the framed presentation disc itself. The highly-coveted Awards are THE way of commemorating UK success for the artists and the teams that support them.
Platinum, Gold and Silver awards adorn the homes of some of the biggest names in recorded music. The growth of digital formats saw a la carte singles and album downloads become eligible from 2004 onwards, while the first Music DVD certification was awarded in 2005. In July 2013, ‘auto-certification’ was introduced to allocate certifications to titles as soon as they passed the relevant sales thresholds, although member companies are still permitted to occasionally certify titles manually based on shipments. Audio streaming data began qualifying towards singles certifications in July 2014.
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Email: gennaro.castaldo@bpi.co.uk
