Articles — collector guides

If the current trend continues vinyl will outsell CDs for the first time in 33 years. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry’s 2019 revenue is comprised of steaming at 80% and physical sales at 20%. Physical sales of vinyl are outpacing CD sales at the mid-year mark. CDs were introduced into the market in 1982. They soon became popular and it was thought that they would make vinyl obsolete. Vinyl sales and production would fall significantly in the 1990s until recently. Surprisingly, in the last decade new and used vinyl sales have steadily increased....

The RIAA in February 1958 ago issued its first Gold album award for the cast album recording of Oklahoma! sung by Gordon MacRae. The first Gold single went to Perry Como for "Catch A Falling Star" earlier that year. After that beginning, it wouldn't be long before one Elvis Presley would capture some gold with 146.5 million album awards over 101 separate Gold (or better) albums. Today, Elvis remains the artist who has earned the most Gold Album Awards of any artist in RIAA history. As the years went on the program gained prestige and it remains an important milestone marking commercial...

The RIAA announced today that the Beatles infamous White Album has been certified 24x Multi-Platinum™ moving it into fourth spot on its all-time sales list past Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II, no slouch itself at 23 million copies sold.  The White Album is also the top multi-disc set of all time and is actually the Beatles best-selling album by a fairly good measure, with their second highest tally being attained by their The Beatles 1967-70 album holding down 18th spot with 17 million copies sold. Of course the Beatles had already achieved one of the most amazing feats by being...

New to collecting record awards, popularly known as "gold" or "platinum" records? Or have some knowledge and just want to know more about these fascinating pieces of music history?  Learn about RIAA awards and what makes them great to add to your collection. Subscribe to our free bi-weekly newsletter and get our 55-page MusicGoldmine RIAA and Record Award Guide FREE plus a 15% off discount code here.

Here's an interesting chart showing the biggest selling hard rock/metal albums of all time, as measured by RIAA certified U.S. sales figures. AC/DC continues to reign supreme in the genre with their brilliant 1980 release Back In Black. Already a double diamond RIAA award winner, can it go for the triple? You will find more infographics at Statista For more content like this, updates on our latest arrivals plus a discount code, subscribe to our MusicGoldmine bi-weekly newsletter here.