in an age where units are instantly sold , and no one has to buy a copy or even spend cash , can we consider a album like drakes new crapsterpiece a legit platinum album .

i grew up in the 90s where you had to wait out side stores to get your copy of biggies album , that was actually a physical copy sold as a product , but now a days a guy like jay z or drake can instantly sell or even worse use a proxy company to pre buy units, basically buying there own album ,

so what makes it a legit to you ?

also the unit is infinitely digital so technically its just one copy no matter how many people have it , please discuss this in as much details as possible .

 

Well, you know, I prefer quality over quantity. From that perspective media certification is some kind of industry-issued marketing tool, and I'm sure back in the days fraudulend practices were as usual as they are today. E.g, not counting acutal sales but counting copies delivered to retailers etc.
Today, physical sales, digital sales as well as streams count even it might not fit your personal taste.

I'd love to discuss this further, I don't know what "a legit" is though.

 

despite it still being common to call a release an "album" , that is a dated term, though strangely
enough you are seeing expensive vinyl pressings of old school rock showing up in guitar center stores these days

as far as legit sales goes, well it depends

"In the US, it takes one million sales for an album to go platinum, while in Slovakia, 6,000 sales equals a platinum record."

http://musicians.about.com/od/ip/g/platinumalbum.htm

I don't even think of music as albums anymore, I did my album buying quite a while ago, and can't remember the last
time I actually bought one, stretching it to recall the last physical CD I bought (used), and at present not buying music anymore
like pretty much everyone else...

with the industry taking such a beating, and people being able to download just the songs
they want without being forced to buy all the "filler" tracks as before, I wouldn't be surprised
if platinum now refers to downloads of just 1 track

 

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A lot of the top name pop artists are still going platinum even double platinum their fans are loyal so they buy there stuff instead of downloading it for free anb nowadays artists use their status and fame to make money in other ways like an endorsement clothing lines perfume and their shows and investments

 

@Herr Durr , hey brother...

I think the term album isn't dated and can be both a physical or bunch of binary numbers strung together to represent that same physical counterpart. To me an album is just a collection of things grouped together and glued to the concept of some similar idea, like an album of photos from our recent trip to Antwerp, or the album we bought from our favorite street musician that we saw in Antwerp.

I remember the first CD I heard. It was Dark Side of The Moon. I listened on headphones and was startled by the difference in sonics. I can akin it to someone poking an ice pick into my ears, so shocking it was to me, and I almost ripped the headphone off of my skull. I remember believing that I heard more detail in the song but that detail could not make up for the what I now would refer to as the "intimacy" of the vinyl version. It almost hurt.

 

uh oh... did you start something again? I believe vinyl sounds better too, and have ever since CD's came out,
notwithstanding when the whole process of music making became digitized, now just seems to be too much trouble
to go through the whole "analog" process of playing an album, when everything is already right at your fingertips

well let's see if this thread becomes the next battle in the analog/digital war....

 

i still buy cd's. and i buy mp3's from itunes.
i like to collect music so i have a vinyl and a cd collection.

it's a shame because i don't want old formats to die out

 

do you miss 8 track tapes too?

sorry .. couldn't help that one

 

You mean, should a million downloads count as "platinum" in sales? That is, if they were each really sold/paid for? Do free downloads count? Do plays on Spotify and other streaming services count, too? Can't a download service or record label over-report sales to the public, while under-reporting to composers and publishers (as has happened to me)? How about legitimate or illegitamate downloads from sites such as Soundcloud and Bandcamp? Is there such a thing as a "gold" or "platinum" free download?

Yes, it had really meant something when people had to produce, promote and distribute on physical playback media, and other people had to leave their domicilesto buy it – but now, all of that significance-lending human effort is practically gone. (Not to mention the former considerably greater human effort involved in playing and producing music, but I'm tired of harping on that subject.)

Almost every convention of the established music industry seems outmoded and archaic now. The methods of legitimately licensing mechanical royalties (for, say, a cover song you've recorded – or a sample you want to legitimately use, if you can believe that people really still expect to have to pay for that) from the Harry Fox Agency require pre-payment per specific projected quanities – which applied for units manufactured, but not for downloads, which have yet to occur and are unpredictable in quantity. The publishing registration process (such as with BMI) doesn't take into account the current variety of methods of "delivery," either.

A clerk at the US Copyright Office told me that if an album has been released on CD or vinyl already, its contents cannot be registered under another anthology with Form SR (which covers the sound recordings and the underlying compositions); two copies of the originally-published CD or LP had to be submitted along with a Form SR for that title. I commented that that was a holdover from a deprecated version of copyright law under which "first publication" automatically established copyright, but he couldn't follow me on that. Then I asked him, "What about putting a song online, such as on Soundcloud? Does that constitute 'publishing'?" – to which he replied, without a hint of irony, "Ah, but that's a gray area!" What? There are "gray areas" in copyright law? Because the bureaucracy of the Copyright Office is behind-the-times, maybe?

 

thats before my time, sorry :P but i do have some cassettes, nothing to play them on anymore but just nice to have

 

Apologies, Mein Herr. It seems that once again definitions seem overly important to me. I harp on years ago when I travelled up and down the California coast as a professional debate judge at the university and high school level. The greatest criteria for me in establishing an outcome between individuals and teams was who was able to define specific words in their arguments. I usually awarded a win to whomever owned the definition at stake. I guess I am in argument mode recently because my brother and I are having to deal with lawyers concerning folks that would like to take a slice of a future inheritance. These days my mind seems to continually search for a loophole. Thanks for bringing it to my consciousness so that I can reign myself in and give myself and those around me a bit of a break from my mindless barrage. No war is a good war, I put it to rest.

 

Actually... about 99% of what i say, is far from serious, so take it with that proverbial grain of salt Mr. Sunshine.
No offense taken, seems like disagreeing without being disagreeable is disappearing in our country,
and virtually everywhere else.

sounds like you have a lot on your plate,
dealing with greedy jerks and lawyers is anything but fun,
and you get to pay through the nose for whatever outcome you get

all good my man best of luck with that !

 

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back in the day did you ever hear the term " Overnight No1"
buying chart ranking, and radio play was and is a "normal" way of promotion

 

in other words... payola?

 

doesn't his second line answer your question?

 

yeah.. just decided to throw in another "dated" term... guess there's enough old farts still around

never heard overnight no. 1 , but i did hear overnight sensation few times,

and I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express one time..

 

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In the old days, 70's 80's 90's, 00's record companies would encourage stores to run the bar codes of certain records through multiple times so that they'd chart. Much easier to do now, but charts and records of sales volumes has always been bullshit.

 

Yup, when there was an actual pay service to get your music on the radio. Payola it was called. It got banned, deemed illegal, but it still exist. Now they just buy the radio stations.
I live in south florida and friggin Maybach Music and Baby own all the hiphop stations. Its like a freakin lil wayne party on the air down here.
Someone like ozzy should start buying all the rock stations and do the same, Im so tired of the borderline country folk music that passes for rock now. And we all know the Billboard Top lists are padded just to get more sales. I think Ive seen "Diamond" status for sales of units (a single) before.

nuff said, keep movin