Topic summary
Platinum certification
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Music recording certification.
History
In 1976, the RIAA introduced the platinum certification for the sale of one million units for albums and two million for singles, with the gold certification redefined for sales of 500,000 units for albums (singles remained at one million). No album was certified platinum prior to this year. The 1958 RCA Victor recording by Van Cliburn of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto would eventually be awarded a platinum citation, but this did not occur until two decades after its release. In 1999, the diamond certification was introduced for sales of ten million units. In the late 1980s, the certification thresholds for singles were dropped to match that of albums.