Reading the New York Times obituary of Pink Floyd's Richard Wright yesterday, I came upon a statistic that the newspaper ran unquestioningly that ticked me off, as it always does when I see similar statements in print:
Pink Floyd’s 1979 album, “The Wall,” eventually sold 23 million copies in the United States.
No, it didn't, I grumbled to myself. It's a double-album—by RIAA math, that means it sold about 11.5 million. SNARL!
There are many things wrong with the Recording Industry Association of America’s system for certifying albums gold, platinum, multiplatinum, and (now) diamond. There’s the counting of records shipped, not sold; I’ve seen discs certified platinum that have actually SoundScanned fewer than 700,000 copies. On the other side of the ledger, there are discs that are under-certified because of the RIAA’s outmoded system requiring labels to request certification—short-changing dozens of classic Motown artists, for example.
But nothing in the RIAA metals methodology sticks in my craw more than double-counting. It’s the biggest scam in record-industry self-tallying, and the main reason it’s infuriating is the very example cited above: journalists and music fans the world over use the RIAA’s certs as their yardstick for all-time album sales. It’s basically a total distortion of rock history.
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Idolator
This weekend is going to be a bit shorter than usual thanks to Chinese Democracy coming out Sunday and the American Music Awards happening Sunday night, so I figured I'd leave you with a snippet of a discussion that I had with Pitchfork's Marc Hogan, where I attempted to figure out why the indie-heavy stretch of that Blender albums list rubbed me the not-right way earlier today: "I guess maybe part of what I’m also trying (clumsily) to say is that I miss the days of the lost major-label gem? The good album that wasn’t by a megastar (either major-label 'celebrity' level or Jenny Lewis 'covered by every music publication' level—you can sub Lucinda Williams in for JL if you want) that was still worthy of recognition? That middle seems to have been lost in the great polarization between 'music-related celebrities' and 'people who really mean it, man,' and it’s a shame, because there are still tons of worthy albums out there that could have used the boost. (Maybe I’m drawing too much on personal experience here, but I do think these lists have some power, still, in this every-ear-for-itself age.)" But am I expecting too much from a wrapup that's ultimately the result of a slightly massaged consensus?
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Blender, the mag where you come for the reviews and leave quickly before you see how bad the features are, has a list of the "20 biggest record company screw-ups of all time." Some are obvious, like the industry's inability to deal with the internet (No. 1) and that guy who turned down the Beatles (No. 2). But should Berry Gordy selling Motown for only $60 million really be No. 3, given that he kept all the copyrights? Does signing R.E.M. to a major-label deal qualify at all? Is Chinese Democracy really the worst cash-hole ever? [
