Platinum, Gold & Silver discs are relaunched as BRIT Certified Awards

This week sees a fresh identity brought to the official record of Britain’s most popular music – the iconic BPI Platinum, Gold and Silver certifications issued to singles and albums on achieving particular sales/streaming landmarks.

From today (6 April) the BPI Awards will be rebranded The BRIT Certified Platinum, Gold & Silver Awards. Whilst they will still be administered by the BPI – the UK record labels association which also owns and organises The BRIT Awards – they will now become part of The BRITs family, with updates to be announced weekly every Friday via The BRITs official @BRITs Twitter, Instagram and Facebook social media accounts (reposted by BPI channels @bpi_music).

The first singles to be acknowledged with a new BRIT Certified Award, to be announced via The BRITs social channels this afternoon, will include Stormzy ft. MNEK’s Blinded by Your Grace Part 2, which goes Platinum, Camila Cabello’s Never be the Same, which goes Gold, and George Ezra’s Paradise, which turns Silver.  The first album to go Platinum with a new BRIT Certified Award identity will be The Weeknd’s Starboy. 

The change, 45 years after the BPI first introduced the scheme in 1973, will enable the Awards to reach more fans and help The BRIT Awards engage music listeners in a year-round conversation about British music.

The thresholds for The BRIT Certified Awards are not changing, however, although these will come under regular review to ensure they remain relevant in a music landscape that is fast being reshaped by streaming. 

Currently singles are awarded Platinum status when, based on Official Charts Company data, they achieve 600,000 units, Gold for 400,000 units and Silver for 200,000 units. For albums, 300,000 units are required to achieve a Platinum certification, 100,000 for Gold and 60,000 for Silver.  Recordings can also attain Multiple certifications – e.g. an album that has sold 3 million copies (including converted audio streams) is denoted as having gone 10x Platinum.   

A new Breakthrough category is additionally being introduced into the suite of Awards to help support new or more recently established artists.  Albums become eligible for this certification when they become the first title by an act/artist to reach the 30,000 units mark.

Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive BPI & BRIT Awards, said:

“The BPI’s Platinum, Gold and Silver Awards are woven into the narrative of British music and are the official mark of a record’s popularity. Artists and their labels value the recognition of their recording successes through an official certification, and a Platinum, Gold or Silver disc on the wall is an iconic memento of musical achievement. On social media fans love to celebrate their favourite artists reaching a big new milestone.

“Given that The BRITs are the UK’s biggest platform for artistic achievement, with millions of fans at home and around the world, it makes sense for the BPI to bring the official sales awards under the BRITs banner.”

The Awards were first introduced by the BPI in 1973.  Among the very first singles to be certified were Slade’s Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me, Wizzard’s See My Baby Jive, The Carpenters’ Yesterday Once More, The Rolling Stones’ Angie, and Sorrow by David Bowie.  Albums recognised with a certification that year included Wings’ Red Rose Speedway and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John – the first album to be awarded Gold certification status on 1^st October 1973.  See Notes to Editors for further details.

More recent certifications, attained just last week (Friday 30^th March 2018), include Amy Winehouse’s multi-award winning studio album Back to Black, which went 13x Platinum (denoting 3.9 million units), Ed Sheeran’s X, which went 11x Platinum (3.3m), Bruno Mars & Cardi B’s single Finesse, which went Gold (400,000), and George Ezra’s new release Staying at Tamara’s, which, as the fastest-selling artist album of 2018, has attained Silver status (60,000). 

The new weekly BRIT Certified social media announcements will feature digital artwork jointly developed in-house by the BPI’s Digital Content & Communications Manager, Darren Kruse, and design agency QD.  The famous framed discs ordered by record labels to present to artists and their teams will, in due course, feature the revised branding. The database and archive for the BRIT Certified Awards will remain on the BPI website for the time being, but this too will be migrated to The BRITs as part of the second phase of the relaunch later this year.