As avid G&P followers appreciate, we’ve focused diligently in the last year on modernizing the program so that it properly reflects a dramatically shifting music marketplace. We now count on-demand streams as part of our Digital Single Award. We’ve aligned our digital single and album rules to enable timely certification requests and waive the 30-day wait rule.

This same philosophy of modernization also applies to the Latin marketplace, where we’ve recently spent some time reflecting on the market and what changes make sense for our program. For starters, we are creating RIAA’s first-ever Latin Digital Single Award. Like the standard Digital Single Award, the certification will include on-demand music streams at the formula of 100 streams being equivalent to one download sale.

On-demand streams on digital music services that are authorized by and reported to the record labels, whether paid for by the consumer through a subscription or free to the consumer through ad-supported services, are accepted for RIAA song certifications. This includes streams from digital services like Muve Music, Rdio, Rhapsody, Slacker, Spotify, Xbox Music and others, plus video streaming services like MTV.com, VEVO, Yahoo! Music, YouTube and many more.

Effective immediately, the new thresholds for Latin digital single and Latin album certifications are Oro – 30,000 units, Platino – 60,000 units, and multi-Platino – 120,000 units (in increments of 60,000 units thereafter). This marks a new Latin album threshold (previously Oro was 50,000 and Platino was 100,000), reflecting developments in the marketplace.

In 2000 the RIAA introduced the Premios de Oro y Platino Award to celebrate Latin music sales, specifically titles that contain more than 50 percent Spanish language. Since launch more than 700 titles have been certified Oro and more than 600 Platino.