Earlier this year, the Recording Industry Association of America moved to change its certification rules to account for the increasing importance of streaming. "Modernizing our Album Award to include music streaming is the next logical step in the continued evolution of Gold & Platinum Awards," noted Cary Sherman, the Chairman and CEO of RIAA. "Doing so enables RIAA to fully reward the success of artists’ albums today."
Under the new rules, several albums were immediately certified Platinum, including Big Sean's Dark Sky Paradise and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly. The Weeknd's Beauty Behind The Madness was bumped up to double-platinum.
Bryson Tiller announced today that his T R A P S O U L release recently earned Platinum status as well. Streaming played a huge role: according to a press release from RCA, the project racked up more than 600 million streams worldwide. Streaming was crucial for Tiller from the beginning: at the end of October 2015, his song “Don’t” had already been streamed more than 25 million times on SoundCloud, even though the track had only recently cracked the top 25 on the Hip-Hop/R&B airplay chart at the time.
According to the singer, the RIAA surprised him with the Platinum announcement after a recent show at Radio City Music Hall. The organization also reportedly asked him to keep his Gold certification secret until recently (he shared the news that T R A P S O U L earned Gold status just last week).
Despite the strange circumstances, Tiller was pleased about the commercial milestone. "Words cannot explain how I feel," he wrote on Instagram. "Thank you if you bought this, you changed my life."
