On March 16, 1999 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the organization that issues music product sales awards, launched the RIAA Diamond Award program. It was created to recognize albums which have achieved the impressive milestone of selling 10 million copies or more in the U.S. The award was designed by renowned crystal designer Peter Yenawine. Yenawine was a (continued below...)
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Check out this YouTube™ video telling the story of the RIAA Diamond Award and its' 1999 launch (Also, subscribe to our MusicGoldmine YouTube channel here for more content about music and collectibles):
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master designer at Steuben Glass—and is now the owner of Crystal Signatures. The award is composed of a crystal spire topped with a diamond-shaped, 728 carat crystal. This crystal portion is set (not glued) into a base with the recipient's name and details of the album being honored.
Here's a vintage example of one of the first 500 of these awards that were produced (actually #438). We at MusicGoldmine managed to acquire this one that was actually issued to Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones for their 1971 Hot Rocks album, which was certified Diamond in 2002:
What is different about the first 500 of these awards made is that the top crystal "diamond" is placed in a sterling silver setting. Later editions of the award utilized a rhodium-plated bezel made instead to eliminate the tarnishing of the silver bezel over time. Silver can of course be easily restored to its' original shine, but to eliminate this problem altogether, the material was changed. Here's a close-up look at this sterling silver bezel version. The 925 stamp indicates the bezel is sterling silver:
You can see more photos and details of this example presented to Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, which is for sale here.
Back in 1999 the RIAA created a special poster to celebrate the launch of the Diamond award. It featured photos of all 63 albums that had reached Diamond sales at that point. This close-up of the poster shows the 63 albums:
All 63 artists were invited and many showed up to receive this new award. It was an interesting event and the guest list was pretty stunning. Members of Boston, Boyz II Men, Def Leppard, Guns N Roses, Billy Joel, Elton John, Journey, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top and many more showed up for the affair. Check out this article for more detail on the poster.
The accolade seemed to be meaningful for the recipients. Upon receiving the award, Elton John commented to the audience: “I think this is the biggest accolade you can be given, because it means that your fans have gone out and bought your records. And that's why we make records--for our public…”
By the mid-2000s the design was updated and today's RIAA Diamond Awards look like this -- this one being for Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, released in 2000, which was certified Diamond on March 9, 2011:
Also, the RIAA launched a "Diamante Award" for Latin genre music recordings more than 50% in the Spanish language that reached the threshold of 10x "Multi-Platino", which is 600,000 units sold. The difference in units-sold thresholds for the Latin awards relates to the size of the Latin music-buying audience.
Finally, and back to RIAA Diamond Awards, as of the date of this article in 2025 the Beatles is the group that has sold the most albums all time in the U.S. at 183 million, and Garth Brooks the solo artist with the most albums sold, at 162 million. Brooks also holds the record for receiving the most RIAA Diamond Awards at nine, with the Beatles at six. At this point, well over 100 albums and singles have been certified Diamond by the RIAA.
MusicGoldmine.com has hundreds of RIAA and other record awards for sale. See our current selection of awards here.
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Photo credits: Eminem RIAA Diamond Award image: Tommycoster, Tommy Coster RIAA Diamond Award, CC BY-SA 4.0, all other images by MusicGoldmine.com
