Music recording sales certification

Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies. The threshold quantity varies by type (such as album, single, music video) and by nation or territory.

Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories, which are named after precious materials.

The number of sales or shipments required for these awards depends upon the population of the territory in which the recording is released. Typically, they are awarded only to international releases and are awarded individually for each country in which the album is sold. Different sales levels, some perhaps 10 times lower than others, may exist for different music media (for example: videos versus albums, singles, or downloads).

USA AND UK certification thresholds
Below are certification thresholds for the United States and the United Kingdom. The numbers in the tables are in terms of "units", where a unit represents one sale or one shipment of a given medium. Certification is often awarded cumulatively, and it is possible for a single album to be certified silver, gold, and platinum in turn. An album that becomes platinum twice over, for example, an album which has sold 2,000,000 copies in the United States, is said to be "double-platinum", or sometimes "multi-platinum". USA UK