Does the RIAA certification for number of albums shipped in the US go by CDs or boxed sets? Does the same rule apply for worldwide sales?
For RIAA certification, which is based on shipments to retailers, not actual sales, a 2-CD set may be counted as one or two, depending on the number of minutes in the total package and whether it is considered a “boxed set”. Sony has determined that HIStory is a boxed set, as it has 150 minutes of music, so each CD within the set is counted separately for certification. For HIStory, therefore, a certification of 6 million (6x Platinum) means that 3 million boxed sets of HIStory were shipped to retailers. (from Billboard) However, the HIStory 2-CD boxed set is counted as one for actual sales in the US. Soundscan receives its sales information from retail outlets, where an automated system registers each time an album is sold. All albums have a Universal Product Code (UPC), and it is this barcode that registers the sale. A 2-CD boxed set has one UPC code and thus is counted as one unit. (from Soundscan) Worldwide sales are counted only by boxed set, so 14 million worldwide sales of HISto
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