Outkast's Billboard performance.

[Crushcrushchris]

I'm amazed at how quickly they've reached seven times platinum, but then again when you've had the top 2 singles in the country for about 2 months, it's as if it took no effort.

Basically I wanted to ask how many times platinum do you all expect Outkast to hit by the time their album run ends which will probably be sometime in August/September and maybe later.

Grammy time's coming up and that will=a nice spike in sales, but do you think their next singles will be successful enough to reach something like 12 times platinum by the end of their run or do you expect that number to be higher?

[ListenToMe]

Well their sales are currently at 3.4-3.5 million and 7 times platinum. As you say, the Grammys should bump their already pretty high weekly sales, so I think they can sell at least 5 million (10 times platinum). If they have other big single's then their sales/certification will be MUCH higher...

[j]

Double-disc certifications always make it look like the sales were huge when they weren't really.

I expect at least 12x platinum by this time next year.

[singingsparrow]

Anyone else think that it is a dumb rule for a double album to have double the chance to get to a diamond certification?

How many units of "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" have been sold so far? 3.2 million or so? Really, it should be triple platinum now, but anyway, by these standards, I'd say they're heading to 14 times platinum by year-end. Norah Jones' album exploded off the Grammys and I expect Outkast to win some accolades, and this being a double album, it should definitely trespass diamond territory by the weird standards being set.

Sincerely,
Noah Eaton

[Matt4319]

I don't think it's dumb. I mean, you're buying two albums at once (even if they may be discounted to near the price of a single album), so why shouldn't they be counted as two?

[WhySoSerious?]

Matt4319 said:

I don't think it's dumb. I mean, you're buying two albums at once (even if they may be discounted to near the price of a single album), so why shouldn't they be counted as two?

Maybe in this particular case, but generally it's not two separate albums. Also, it's not like the consumer has a choice of buying one or the other. They have to buy both.

[halo19]

I agree with Matt4319's point. A double album is usually a bit less than twice of the price of a single album, so people would have to shell out more money to buy those albums than the ones at a $12 price.

[Bob]

I don't think it should count twice as much, it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem as bad with Outkast since the two albums are different, but what about with R. Kelly's double-disc "R."? That's crap, it's just longer is all.

Maybe the rule should be it counts 1.5x or something, I don't know.

[j]

I don't think it's dumb either, just that it's a little misleading sometimes.

[EvanJ]

okletthisworksvp said:

Maybe the rule should be it counts 1.5x or something, I don't know.

I don't think they would do something with a number that isn't a whole number. Imagine an album shipping 1,000,000.5 units (that would be 666,667 packages multiplied by 1.5).