Certification of The Joshua Tree in UK

[edge3]

In UK The Joshua Tree was certified 6xPlat (1.8M) in March 1992 by BPI. But when Musicweek publish their top 75 album chart it, strangely, only appears as 5xPlat (1.5M). Anyone know why this is?

 

[Yahweh]

hard to say....maybe its certified for 7X platnum for shipments and only 5X for sales but who knows.

 

[STING2]

When old albums re-enter the chart, they are sometimes listed with an outdated sales certification. This happens often with the catalog chart in the USA.

 

[edge3]

So, it really is time they re-certified JT in UK : 7xPlatinum at least. I'm sick of seeing it certified 5 / 6xPlatinum when it's clearly sold at least 2.2M. It's a bloody disgrace!! I think we should write to the record company & demand for them to do it. Or give them the £400 or whatever the BPI charges them to do this. What do you reckon?

 

[ybird3k]

the BPI charges record companys to certify albums platinum ?

 

[edge3]

That's what I've heard.

 

[STING2]

the BPI charges record companys to certify albums platinum ?

The BPI does the audit of the albums sales in order to insure that it has sold x amount, just like any accounting firm doing an audit of a business's accounts. So, of course, BPI wants to be payed for their services.

 

[doctorwho]

The RIAA (in the U.S.) also charges for auditing.

Hence, the only reason a label gets an audit done is more for "bragging rights". For example, when an artist releases a new album, it's nice to say "from the quadruple platinum selling artist comes their new release". Additionally, to demonstrate that an artist has a hit album, an audit is often done shortly after an album's release (like what was done for HTDAAB - this way, writers will talk about the triple platinum album). Lastly, I'm sure audits are done periodically to update a label's own records.

However, for an older release, there is no immediate need to do an audit, hence why so many things are out of date.