Kanye’s label says TLOP is the first streaming-only LP to go Platinum

Surprising no one, Kanye’s eighth album The Life Of Pablo has gone Platinum in the US, a year after its release.

The achievement continues his winning streak of Platinum certifications for all of his full-length releases. According to a press release sent by his label Def Jam, it marks the first streaming-only album to reach Platinum status.

That’s not entirely true. Upon release last February, the record was sold via his official website for a few hours on February 14, and it’s also available now as a US$20 download at music.kanyewest.com.

Granted, the album was made available as a six-week Tidal exclusive (aside from its brief stint on kanyewest.com) and has now been streamed over three billion times worldwide on Tidal, Apple Music and Spotify. Its songs alone have been streamed 1.5 billion times in the US.

According to a Billboard source, the RIAA does not break out the components of any certification. This means the Platinum certification (a million equivalent album units) blends traditional album sales with on-demand audio and video streams.

However, the RIAA’s guidelines were updated in 2016 to reflect the contribution of streaming. Now, 150 streams of a song would equal one song download, meaning the tracks from TLOP would have to be streamed 1,500 times for it to be counted as an album sale.

Confused? TechCrunch crunched the numbers so you didn’t have to:

“If 1,500 streams equals one album sale, and you multiply that by the 1 million album sales needed to go platinum, you get a minimum requirement of 1.5 billion steams needing to get an album certified platinum.”

Locally, the LP is yet to achieve an ARIA certification.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.