Talk:List of highest-certified music artists in the United States

Sources used as references

• McCarthy, Joe; Wiggins, Brandon (April 19, 2020). "Lady Gaga, Céline Dion, Taylor Swift, and More: Musical Moments From 'One World: Together At Home' You Need to Watch". Global Citizen. Retrieved May 2, 2020.

Why is this article about The One World: Together At Home celebrated April 18, 2020, quoted so many times as a source providing numbers of certifications by RIAA if that article does not mentions certifications by RIAA? This happens with several other websites used as references. Why are websites with no mention to cerfications used as sources? Lots of these certifications have references that are from 2020. That's four year old and some of these numbers changed since 2020. Paladium (talk) 17:18, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

New Section

Should a separate section be added in this page for artists who've sold the most certified albums and singles combined in the United States? The RIAA's website lists best selling artists from album sales and then single sales whilst excluding features which would tend to skew it for this kind of list. So we could come up with a ranked section ordering artists based on total records sold to date.

This is just an idea but it would theoretically work very well and would be helpful for people viewing the page Never17 (talk) 07:57, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Like if you go to this page right here, it will give us a complete tally of the best selling artists in the United States whilst excluding their featured collaborations

https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?advance_search=1&tab_active=awards_by_artist&type=all#search_section Never17 (talk) 07:59, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

No, it has been discussed before that we should not combine albums and singles due to double-counting reason. All the singles' certified units have also been counted for albums' certifications (10 downloads or 1,500 streams each contribute to 1 album unit). It largely inflates the certified units for artists in digital era. Contrary to pre-digital era, physical singles were never counted for albums certifications. Bluesatellite (talk) 05:05, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Concern regarding double-counting of streaming-based album equivalents

I would like to raise a methodological concern regarding how modern streaming-era sales figures are presented and compared with those from the physical-sales era. In current industry standards (e.g. RIAA, Billboard), a fixed number of on-demand audio streams (commonly ~1,500) are converted into one “album-equivalent unit” (AEU). At the same time, those same streams are also counted toward individual track totals. This creates an implicit form of double-counting when cumulative “units” (albums + singles) are summed across an artist’s career. This differs fundamentally from the physical era. When a consumer purchased a physical album (vinyl, cassette, CD), the sale was counted once as an album sale. The individual tracks on that album were not simultaneously credited as separate “song sales.” In other words, album sales and single sales were largely distinct categories. As a result, direct comparisons between legacy artists (whose totals are based on physical album and single sales) and modern artists (whose totals include streaming-derived album equivalents plus track-based streams) risk overstating the latter when combined into a single headline figure such as “total units sold.” A possible way to improve clarity and historical comparability would be to: Clearly separate physical-era sales (albums and singles as originally counted) from digital/streaming-era equivalents, or Avoid summing album-equivalent units and track-equivalent units into a single cumulative number without explicit explanation. This would not diminish the success of streaming-era artists, but would provide readers with a more transparent understanding of how different accounting systems affect reported totals across eras. I raise this as a suggestion for clarification rather than a criticism, in the interest of methodological consistency and encyclopedic neutrality. Friislund79 (talk) 16:44, 14 January 2026 (UTC)