In theory, lets say a popular mainstream act releases 4 singles from an album. A single usually has a music video, and music videos generally get the higher views on Youtube, not audio only and lyric videos. If all 4 singles count towards the sale of an album, each video would have to get around 375,000,000 views in the USA (not total worldwide) to count as a million sold. Singles usually are released 1 at a time, and 1 single might be popular for 2 or 3 months. At this rate it would take around a year to go platinum. After the initial popularity dies off, there's not that much of a chance for a particular video to get enough views to get any further gold or platinum certifications

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There's also the case of older acts who might have the same song on several albums, the original, plus re-releases, greatest hits/best of, box sets, movie soundtracks, Now That's What I Call Music! CDs, Time-Life type compilations sold on infomercials, etc. So on an audio only streaming site (not Youtube), the numbers for a song could be divided onto whatever album the listener chose. Some songs were single only and were not originally on an album. It's unlikely that many of these non-album songs will get enough listens to even go gold. But if in theory some do, I'm not sure how these will be counted as album sales since an album does not exist.

MickyDolenz said:

In theory, lets say a popular mainstream act releases 4 singles from an album. A single usually has a music video, and music videos generally get the higher views on Youtube, not audio only and lyric videos. If all 4 singles count towards the sale of an album, each video would have to get around 375,000,000 views in the USA (not total worldwide) to count as a million sold. Singles usually are released 1 at a time, and 1 single might be popular for 2 or 3 months. At this rate it would take around a year to go platinum. After the initial popularity dies off, there's not that much of a chance for a particular video to get enough views to get any further gold or platinum certifications

.

There's also the case of older acts who might have the same song on several albums, the original, plus re-releases, greatest hits/best of, box sets, movie soundtracks, Now That's What I Call Music! CDs, Time-Life type compilations sold on infomercials, etc. So on an audio only streaming site (not Youtube), the numbers for a song could be divided onto whatever album the listener chose. Some songs were single only and were not originally on an album. It's unlikely that many of these non-album songs will get enough listens to even go gold. But if in theory some do, I'm not sure how these will be counted as album sales since an album does not exist.

Sounds complicated Well, do you think anyone will break MJ's Thriller album sales record?

SeventeenDayze said:

Well, do you think anyone will break MJ's Thriller album sales record?

Not likely. There's around 7 billion people on earth right now according to this. If it were possible for each person to watch a video just once, it would round off to about 4 million copies "sold". So that's 4 platinum or 8 gold in the US. Platinum and gold are different depending on the country though. I think it's less than a million in a lot of countries. At any rate, it will be a really long time, if ever, before a video even reaches 7 billion, and that's only for quadruple platinum, not even diamond. There's also the case that people download albums for free. Many places don't have a record store and many people also do not own a stereo where you would have to buy a record, tape, or CD. The last time I went to places like Wal Mart & Best Buy, the CD section was really small and was a lot of Greatest Hits, whatever is in the Top 10, and a few Spanish language music CDs. You need nothing to listen to music on a computer, Ipod, phone, etc. other than a digital file. I think videogames are the new albums, and the popular games generally appeal to a wider audience than a music act.

[Edited 2/15/16 12:32pm]

Yeah, bullshit.