Bruno Mars' 'Just The Way You Are' is the highest certified single in RIAA history

[PartySick 162,099]

1 hour ago, weed said:

Hello... can you hee-hee me?

I do wonder how this whole thing works. Billie Jean and Thriller were both certified diamond in 2022 but they're both singles from the best selling album of all time and by 2022, they've had 40 years to sell on their own  

I look at the Wikipedia list and it says Just The Way You Are is 13x platinum from 2019...is this implying that they only certified half it's sales/streams then or that he doubled the sales and streams of a nearly decade old song (at that point) in the five years between then and now?  

MJ's numbers are never gonna make sense, I accept that. They're like "Thriller has sold 70 million to 120 million copies! We'll never know! We just know it's the most!" but Bruno?  

Another reason I don't do charts, none of this stuff makes sense to me  

[Anderson123 38,969]

More than Rolling In The Deep? It’s quite a surprise but great song. 

[Gagaplayer315 14,269]

DWAS still paid for his gambling debt tho 

[Future Lovers 7,121]

4 hours ago, PartySick said:

I do wonder how this whole thing works. Billie Jean and Thriller were both certified diamond in 2022 but they're both singles from the best selling album of all time and by 2022, they've had 40 years to sell on their own  

I look at the Wikipedia list and it says Just The Way You Are is 13x platinum from 2019...is this implying that they only certified half it's sales/streams then or that he doubled the sales and streams of a nearly decade old song (at that point) in the five years between then and now?  

MJ's numbers are never gonna make sense, I accept that. They're like "Thriller has sold 70 million to 120 million copies! We'll never know! We just know it's the most!" but Bruno?  

Another reason I don't do charts, none of this stuff makes sense to me  

The big thing to remember is that certified sales and actual sales are often not going to be in step with each other. Certifications can only happen if a label requests and pays for them, the RIAA does not just do them automatically. 

The 13x platinum certification from 2019 in all likelihood at that time was already inaccurate, it was just what it was at when his label had last paid for certification. Typically, a label will stop certifying a song unless they see it moving toward some sort of major milestone. 

They knew it was approaching this point, so they sprang to get an up-to-date certification for it. 

But if a label doesn't do this, well then you'll see the disparity between an artist's estimated sales and their certified sales. 

For example, Michael Jackson is estimated to have sold between 400 and 500 million records, but only 297.4 million are certified. The Beatles are estimated to have sold 500 to 600 million records, but only 295.9 million are certified. 

For this reason--certifications not being automatic and becoming outdated once a label stops keeping track of them--any sort of ranking of best selling artists does not make use of certified sales, but rather estimated sales.