Source: Blabbermouth.net
LAMB OF GOD‘s third album, “Ashes Of The Wake”, which came out in 2004 via Epic, was officially certified gold in February by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for sales in excess of a 500,000 copies.
Prior to their concert earlier tonight (Tuesday, May 17) at The Paramount in Huntington, New York, the members of LAMB OF GOD were presented with gold plaques signifying the achievement. Check out a photo above (courtesy of the band’s publicists at Adrenaline PR).
Over the past few years, more and more people have stopped paying to download or physically own albums and started instead consuming music on platforms like Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music. As a result, effective February 1, RIAA started including on-demand audio and video streams and a track sale equivalent in gold and platinum album award. The modernization of the program’s album rule follows a similar update made to digital single certifications in 2013, when the RIAA first added on-demand streams to its digital single award. Collectively, this now means that the program’s iconic benchmarks — 500,000 (gold), 1,000,000 (platinum) and 2,000,000 plus (multi-platinum) — count both sales and streams for single and album certifications.
After a comprehensive analysis of a variety of factors — including streaming and download consumption patterns and historical impact on the program — and also consultation with a myriad of industry colleagues, the RIAA set the new album award formula of 1,500 on-demand audio and/or video song streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sale. RIAA‘s digital single award ratio was also updated from 100 on-demand streams = 1 download to 150 on-demand streams = 1 download to reflect the enormous growth of streaming consumption in the two plus years since that ratio was set. Just as RIAA announced when setting the initial formula in 2013, the analysis and the determination of a formula is based on comparative consumption patterns, not marketplace value.
“Ashes Of The Wake” was reissued as a DualDisc edition in March 2005. One side of the “Ashes” DualDisc featured the regular album, while the other was a DVD featuring the entire album in enhanced LPCM Stereo, plus bonus features.
LAMB OF GOD‘s latest album, “VII: Sturm Und Drang”, was released in July 2015 via Epic in the U.S. and Nuclear Blast Entertainment in all territories outside of North America. The CD was once again produced and mixed by Josh Wilbur with engineering by Wilbur, Nick Rowe and Kyle McAulay, and was recorded at NRG Recording Studios in North Hollywood, California and Suburban Soul Studios in Torrance, California.
