‘The Life of Pablo’ Goes Platinum

Kanye West

Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo has gone platinum:

An album typically goes platinum after selling 1 million copies. But last year the RIAA announced guidelines that would let streaming number contribute to an album’s certified status. They decided that 150 streams of a song would equal one song download, and 10 song downloads would equal one album download. That means an artist’s songs would have to be streamed 1,500 times for it to be counted as an album sale.

So 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.

For Laura Jane Grace, Punk Was A Form Of Armor

Laura Jane Grace

Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! is on the latest episode of NPR’s Fresh Air podcast.

It was a form of expression, in a way, that I couldn’t express myself how I wanted to otherwise. And it also served as a form of armor, because when you’re wearing a big leather jacket with spikes on it and you’re charging out your hair with Knox gelatin, I mean, you’re like, arming yourself. I got beat up a lot, so that was something to kind of hold onto.