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Will Smith Official Album Sales


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From the RIAA.com website:

Certification

The Process

The certification process begins with an independent sales audit of each title by Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, a highly respected accounting firm that has been auditing title sales for the RIAA® for more than 20 years.

The audit calculates what product has been shipped for sale, net after returns, versus product used for promotional purposes, for the life of the release. When certifying audio and music video releases, the independent auditor is careful to survey the entire music marketplace. An artist's Gold® or Platinum® award represents sales through retail, record clubs, rackjobbers, and all other ancillary markets that legitimately distribute music. Once a title’s sales has been audited and verified as having reached requisite levels, a formal certification report is issued and sent to the title's record company.

We are often asked why we don’t just use sales figures from SoundScan. SoundScan measures over-the-counter sales at music retail locations, while the RIAA®'s certification levels are based on unit shipments (minus returns) from manufacturers to a wide range of accounts, including non-retail record clubs, mail order houses, specialty stores, units shipped for Internet fulfillment or direct marketing sales, such as TV-advertised albums. The other difference is that SoundScan's archive is only a few years old, while the RIAA® has tracked artists' sales levels for more than 40 years.

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The reason it gets so confused is that most people just use Soundscan numbers. Soundscan doesn't take into account the mom & pop record stores, internet sales and other types of stores that may sell music. Soundscan only scans CDs from the big retailers(Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, etc.). So according to Soundscan numbers, Born To Reign sold a little over 237,000 records. When you add in all other types of sales, that pushed BTR to Gold Status. Born To Reign has sold over 500,000 records, it's just that Soundscan does not take into account all other types of sales. YOU CAN NOT BE CERTIFIED GOLD UNLESS YOU SELL 500,000 CDS.

I hope this puts an end to this debate.

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An artist's Gold® or Platinum® award represents sales through retail, record clubs, rackjobbers, and all other ancillary markets that legitimately distribute music

Again, the RIAA counts SALES only. If it were measured on the basis of shipments, then just about everyone would gold or platinum. Most big record labels ship 500,000 - 1 million copies for established artists like Will. The RIAA counts shipments minus sales from all markets that legitimately sell music. Sony probably shipped out a million and got back less than half of a million. Don't get confused over the shipment minus sales stuff. Gold and Platinum certifications are based strictly on how many CDs were sold, not shipped.

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I don't think everything has been sufficiently cleared up. Let me elaborate.

The certification process begins with an independent sales audit of each title by Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, a highly respected accounting firm that has been auditing title sales for the RIAA® for more than 20 years. The audit calculates what product has been shipped for sale, net after returns, versus product used for promotional purposes, for the life of the release. When certifying audio and music video releases, the independent auditor is careful to survey the entire music marketplace. An artist's Gold® or Platinum® award represents sales through retail, record clubs, rackjobbers, and all other ancillary markets that legitimately distribute music. Once a title’s sales has been audited and verified as having reached requisite levels, a formal certification report is issued and sent to the title's record company.
SoundScan measures over-the-counter sales at music retail locations, while the RIAA®'s certification levels are based on unit shipments (minus returns) from manufacturers to a wide range of accounts, including non-retail record clubs, mail order houses, specialty stores, units shipped for Internet fulfillment or direct marketing sales, such as TV-advertised albums.

You've said that the RIAA counts "sales," however the second quote say that they count unit shipments (minus returns). The first quote says, The audit calculates what product has been shipped for sale, net after returns. It seems that the pertinent question would be "Exactly what sales are they counting?" Now correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to say that the RIAA directly monitors sales from the stores that record companies ship to. That is to say, sales of individual records. If Best Buy recieves 1000 records from Sony and doesn't return any of them, and happens to sell 900... will the RIAA report that 900 records, specifically, have been sold? From the wording of the two quotes, it seems like the RIAA would count the number of shipments (1000) minus the number of returns (0) and report a sale of 1000 records in their audit. This would be the net shipment to Best Buy... but not necessarily the amount of records Best Buy has sold. Perhaps you can clarify this.

Also, for anyone interested in how soundscan works...

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Nielsen SoundScan is an information system that tracks sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada. Sales data from point-of-sale cash registers is collected weekly from over 14,000 retail, mass merchant and non-traditional (on-line stores, venues, etc.) outlets. Weekly data is compiled and made available every Wednesday. Nielsen SoundScan is the sales source for the Billboard music charts.

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