Online streams will now count toward RIAA gold and platinum certification

By Marah Eakin | May 10, 2013 | 2:30pm

Aux Features Music

Online streams will now count toward RIAA gold and platinum certification

Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste

Read our announcement | See the 10 Best Games of 2025 (So Far)

The RIAA has announced plans to lump online stream counts into its calculations for gold and platinum single certification. In the new system, 100 streams of a track will count as one digital download, though singles will still have to “sell” 500,000 copies to get gold certification and a million copies to go platinum. To put it in simpler terms: Because Psy’s “Gangnam Style” has been played literally 1.5 billion times on YouTube, the single has now gone platinum 15 times, just from that site alone.

The RIAA will accept streaming data from a number of different services, including YouTube, MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, Spotify, and VEVO. So far, these new rules have already led to 56 singles being granted gold or platinum status, including 30 Seconds To Mars’ “This Is War,” Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games,” and Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.”