Template talk:Certification Table Entry/Archive 2

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Sales figures: combined vs traditional

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is consensus for both, though this may requite the template to be overhauled. There was no consensus on what form it would take. AlbinoFerret 00:36, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

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When a certification is based on traditional paid-for sales and a factor for streaming, there are often disputes over whether sources which quote the combined sales or the traditional sales should take precedence. Sometimes, as in Hello (Adele song)#Certifications (UK entry), one source may give both (259,000 paid for, 333,000 combined). Sometimes a more recent combined figure may be available but some editors revert to the last traditional figure. There are strong feelings about inclusion of streaming in music charts and awards but can we try to steer this conversation away from whether we approve or not in order to reach the best solution for the people actually reading the pages?

Background: Music certifications in different countries are measured using different factors and these are changed from time to time due to changes in technology. The two most significant changes were inclusion of digital downloaded songs and inclusion of streaming of songs, which have happened in some countries and not others and at different times. In general, the industry is trying to avoid the drop in headline sales which happened in the 2000s when it was slow to adopt digital downloads as sales of physical records (mainly CDs) fell off; currently, in many places, digital downloads themselves are falling while streaming is growing, so the industry is keen to incorporate streaming into charts and awards to avoid appearing in decline.

The big change is that streaming is not necessarily paid for by the end-user and so it seems wrong to some people that this is labelled a 'sale'. However, from the record company's point of view, there is still a sale to the streaming provider who then may use subscription or advertising to cover it. In some ways this is more reflective of what is being consumed than the old system where shipments were counted, as this was based on preconceptions of what might sell rather than actual demand. Btljs (talk) 10:25, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Presumably the certification nowadays is based on the combined figure, so that's the one that should be used? Richard3120 (talk) 15:00, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't it make more sense to list all applicable figures, as long as they can be properly and individually sourced? —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 23:01, 01 November 2015 (UTC)

I wondered this; it would mean some redesign on this template as it can't currently support more than one sales figure. I'd be keen to get any change within the table rather than as endless footnotes (see section above). We'd need 2 'salesamount's and 2 'salesref's and then a way of displaying them that wouldn't confuse.Btljs (talk) 07:24, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

At the very least, we will need something which indicates explicitly what the figure represents without the reader having to consult the reference. Btljs (talk) 08:14, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

But what are the certifications currently based on? For the Adele example you give above, I see that the sales figure is noted as the traditional sale – is this what the BPI use to certify the award, or is it the combined sales with streaming? Admittedly this single would have gone silver with either sales figure, as the silver award level is 200,000. I ask because I think the figure used to calculate the award should come first, whether that's the traditional or combined figure. Richard3120 (talk) 14:54, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that's probably right, but the problem is the set up of the table as it stands and whether the whole thing actually needs to be overhauled. At the moment the only way of telling what the figures in the sales/shipments column represent is a set of footnotes which don't cover all the possibilities and are only applied when no independent sales reference is available. I have seen (and disapprove) global sales being totted up at the bottom of this column regardless of different measures in different countries. If you look at Uptown Funk which is triple platinum, the sales figure is 1.47M, which is traditional sales. As it happens, there's a good recent source for its combined sales of 2.1M and it gets edited backwards and forwards between the two. To my mind, both are useful pieces of information and if there was a way of including both, that would be great - I'm just not sure how. Something like this, perhaps (but with the facility to do two references)?

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Australia (ARIA)	8× Platinum	560,000^
Sweden (GLF)	Platinum	40,000‡
United Kingdom (BPI)	3× Platinum	1,470,000 2,100,000 inc. streams
United States (RIAA)	9× Platinum	5,500,000
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

Btljs (talk) 08:29, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Besides record companies are including streamings for certifications and charts, I personally think that it must not be considered as sales; however, I don't think it should be ignored in Wikipedia pages. In the other hand, I don't think it must be included in Certification/Sales tables, because combined sales can confuse people who don't know about them. To solve this problem, I considere combined sales must be added in the "Commercial Performance" section ( it must be specified) and traditional sales must be added in the Certificacion/Sales tables Jose.rms (talk) 20:48, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

@Jose.rms: The problem is that if the certification now includes sales from streaming, I don't think we have any choice except to include it in the certification table. It would look strange if a single had a gold certification in the UK for 400,000 sales, and yet the sales figure next to it is 374,000, for example, because we are only including traditional sales. Richard3120 (talk) 22:50, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Also we have to keep up with the way this is dealt with in the wider media. One example was on the chart show this Friday when Greg James announced that "Hello" was still number one "with over half a million sales in two weeks and five million streams this week". This is doubly confusing as the half a million includes a factor for the streams and yet it is announced as two separate things. On one hand we have to stay true to sources but on the other we shouldn't be simply repeating confusing and inconsistent information. Btljs (talk) 23:09, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

@Richard3120: I understand, but if certification tables show combined sales, it must be specified, at least, in the commercial performance section. It would be better if it is specified in the certification table itself.Jose.rms (talk) 18:11, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Streaming in UK Albums Chart

The certification table entry template should be expanded to include streaming data. Unreal7 (talk) 23:31, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to include a streaming parameter

With the RIAA now joining other countries in adding streaming to certification for albums sales (source), I think we should include a parameter that denotes that it includes streaming as well so that it's included automatically. Erick (talk) 01:45, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Categories for certifications discontinued

Hi folks; in this discussion and this one, it was decided to discontinue the categories for albums and singles by certifications. This may require some changes to the template. I've made edits which I believe will turn off the autocategorization, but someone who knows more about the template may want to make some edits to clean up the template now that this autocat function is no longer going to be part of it. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:12, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

These categories were still referenced in the template code, but that part of the code was broken. While fixing that broken part of the code today, I resolved the above request by removing the the certification-related category code. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:01, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Categories fixed

I have modified this template to fix the categorization of articles by region. The categories in Category:Certification Table Entry usages were not populating correctly.

I have also removed references to categories deleted in these discussions.

I tested this changes in the sandbox, but I may have missed something. Revert these changes if I caused a problem, and I will try to fix the problems. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:11, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your edit, but I guess there are some problems. See for example the article 25: the template is used for South Africa, which is not properly supported. Can you please fix it? --Stee888 (talk) 21:39, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

South Africa is not a supported region. See the documentation for this template. It looks like a previous version of this template tried to check for supported regions. If I can make it work, I'll re-implement that check and make it work this time.

It may be possible to add support for South Africa to this template. If you think there is a way to do that using reliable sources, create a new section on this talk page to explain how to do it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:15, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Serious issue with Italian singles certification

As you can read here, since February 2015 a single is certified platinum when it has sold 50,000 copies, but the template is currently outdated and it only counts 30,000 copies. The same issue with the Gold certification level, which was raised from 15,000 to 25,000 copies. This issue causes serious inaccurances in the affected articles, eg. the song "Roma-Bangkok" was certified 7xPlatinum, which actually means 350,000 copies (7x50,000), but the template currently says it sold 210,000 copies (7x30,000). Please fix the template. --Cavarrone 09:24, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Irish certifications

The template for Irish certifications doesn't work any more, and in addition the irishcharts.ie site only has certifications from 2005 to 2013 – does anybody know where to find them for 2014 onwards? I've written to IRMA, but as with my messages to the OCC and RIAA regarding errors on their websites, I've had no reply. Richard3120 (talk) 17:45, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Addendum If it turns out that we can't link to any source for Irish certifications I think it should be removed from the template. Richard3120 (talk) 17:29, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

How to highlight pure sales in the table?

Now that those symbols (^, ‡) don't appear in the table anymore, it may be confusing by readers how to distinguish pure sales (always with a source) from just the certification equivalent figure. A color in the background? or something. This is especially for the RIAA (U.S.) row, that include streaming since 2013. Cornerstonepicker (talk) 00:06, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

@Cornerstonepicker: is this like the discussion "Sales figures: combined vs traditional" above which was closed without consensus? I agree the table needs to be changed somehow to reflect the difference between the original certification based on sales/shipments, and the more recent ones based on sales + streaming. RIAA award different certifications for both (see "Bohemian Rhapsody" for example) so you'd think it would be important from now on to make the distinction. Richard3120 (talk) 21:41, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: I didn't notice it. But I'm talking about when we know the certification (per RIAA website) but not pure sales. so the table (is now) something like

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
United States (RIAA)	2× Platinum	2,000,000^
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

Meaning it has sold 2million copies. Which is misleading, since probs 50% comes from streaming. And to be honest, it isn't fair to other songs that have their pure-sales figure sourced.

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
United States (RIAA)	2× Platinum	2,000,000 inc. streams^
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

kinda works for this. If someone finds pure-sales, it would be replaced. Cornerstonepicker (talk) 21:56, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

@Cornerstonepicker: I think this is getting to be a real issue going forward: I see other posts from Unreal7 and Erick above, which, while not exactly on the same subject, are also wondering how we should incorporate streaming into sales and certification tables. I think that discussion needs to be revisited, and to widen the debate by pinging potentially interested editors on the WikiProjects Albums and Songs, try and gather a consensus, and then figure out how to rewrite the template code. Because this clearly isn't a passing issue, streaming is now a fact of life, and the longer it goes unresolved, the longer someone likes you has to waste time debating whether "Worth It" has actually sold 3m in the US or not. ;-) Richard3120 (talk) 22:03, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: It didn't. It sold like 1 million but you can see their fans on Twitter saying "is 3 million. Wikipedia says!!1". This can be avoided so easy. Yeah maybe WT:SONGS is the place. Cornerstonepicker (talk) 22:13, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

My proposal in the closed discussion above was to include both figures where available and I haven't changed my opinion. In a nutshell this is because both are valuable pieces of information - one relating directly to the way the certification is calculated and the other a historical measurement which is readily understood by everybody the world over. The former can be included in all cases by simple application of arithmetic to the award; the latter MUST be accompanied by a reference or left blank. The two measures continue to diverge over time so that they really aren't measuring the same thing at all ie. a 'hit' in one may not be a 'hit' in the other. There are cases, clearly, where streams = zero, and in the future there may be cases where sales = zero. We need to catalogue that shift. Btljs (talk) 08:56, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

@Btljs: Well, RIAA now have two forms of certification – as I noted above, searching for "Bohemian Rhapsody" on their database will show you it has a gold certification for what is described as "standard" format (presumably meaning physical formats), and 4x platinum certification for "digital" format, which http://www.riaa.com/about-awards describes as download sales plus streaming. If RIAA are giving out two types of certification now, I really don't see why Wikipedia can't move with the times and incorporate that change into the certification table as well, which would eliminate the confusion over "Worth It"'s "sales" that Cornerstonepicker describes above. Similarly, we know that in the UK that the OCC often give separate figures for sales and for sales+streaming: the latter is reflected in the section "Songs with a million combined sales" in the article List of million-selling singles in the United Kingdom which you and others like Unreal7 maintain. In both the US and UK cases I agree with you, it would be helpful to be able to have separate certification table entries to distinguish between the two sets of figures.

Not that I have too much faith in RIAA as they seem to be deliberately ignoring the fact that up until 1989 the gold and platinum certification levels were twice what they are now, so all singles certified before that year have quoted sales figures that are half of what they should be. :-/ Richard3120 (talk) 15:51, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I didn't know that about RIAA - I don't do a lot with US certs. Seems a bit arbitrary to separate digital from physical but not separate downloads from streaming to my mind. Btljs (talk) 15:38, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Btljs ,I would imagine it's because virtually no singles are released in the US on physical formats anymore, so it's easier to make a clean break with the formats of the past for current certifications. To my mind there therefore shouldn't be any objections in including the two US certification types in the table: for the UK it's trickier because as you say there is no such distinction and certifications are based on sales (real or otherwise) of all formats combined, so perhaps getting consensus for your suggestion may be trickier. Richard3120 (talk) 15:49, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Richard3120 Yes, I guess. It means that there are potentially three figures for each song in the US (physical, digital download sales and digital combined sales). In the UK, Alan Jones at MusicWeek has totally embraced new sales and rarely gives pure sales figures while the OCC still maintains its million seller list on pure sales alone (but for how much longer, given that it's an increasingly rare event for a new pure million seller?) Until the OCC stops giving out lifetime sales figures for songs, I think we are justified in including both, but I do think this will be transitory. Btljs (talk) 19:36, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

One idea I have is to keep the old figures, but change it with additional parameters. For example, maybe a parameter "streaming=yes" could change the symbol. Erick (talk) 16:09, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Magiciandude, do you mean for the UK? That wouldn't work for the US, because of the two entirely separate certifications they now give out. Richard3120 (talk) 16:14, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Could you elaborate further? I was under the assumption that albums certified before the RIAA change the criteria are still based on shipments while albums certified after the RIAA change the critieria are now based on shipments and streaming. Erick (talk) 16:17, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

What I mean is, like I highlighted with "Bohemian Rhapsody" above, is that records can now have a certification for physical formats AND a certification for digital formats/streaming... if for "Bohemian Rhapsody" we set your proposed parameter to "yes", that presumably would mean there would be no way to include the fact that the single also has a separate gold certification and 1 million additional sales on physical formats. Richard3120 (talk) 16:21, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

A better example: "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston is 4x platinum on physical sales, and 2x platinum on digital/streaming sales... would you set streaming to "yes" or "no" in this case? Either way you "lose" millions of sales and at least two platinum certifications. This is why I think it would be better to include both types of certification levels, it would give a better idea of overall sales. Richard3120 (talk) 16:30, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Oh, okay, now that makes sense. This is quite a dilemma. Erick (talk) 16:41, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Belgium certyfications

Hello. I posted here problem. Eurohunter (talk) 15:59, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

BPI reference

It seems that the BPI have disabled searching for the certifications. The current URL http://www.bpi.co.uk/certified-awards.aspx takes you to the certification news section.

After a little more digging it seems this url works now http://www.bpi.co.uk/certified-awards/search.aspx

BrandonJackTar (talk) 09:15, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Italian single sales

Can someone update the template to reflect that from 2015 the italian sales have changed. Its 25,000 for gold and 50,000 for platinum now. You would have to update the {{Certification Table Entry/Sales}} template. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 08:35, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

This has been mentioned already IndianBio, in the thread Template talk:Certification Table Entry#Serious issue with Italian singles certification above. Basically we need a coder to go through all the issues that have been brought up in the last few months and fix the template: Belgian certification levels have also changed; we've found that New Zealand levels have changed twice over their existence; we need to add a separate parameter for US certifications to take account of the fact you can receive separate awards for both physical AND digital sales; and Irish and Dutch certifications probably need to be removed from the template because IRMA and NVPI no longer display awards on their websites, so any use of the template for these countries goes straight to a dead link. I'd do it myself if I wasn't so useless at coding... Richard3120 (talk) 10:36, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Oh thanks for explaining it Richard3120, it seems we are at a dearth for coders here, lol. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 10:38, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

I'll drop some Wikipedia coders a line and see if they can fix the simple issues – the US certifications is a problem that requires consensus, and I'm not sure of the best way of making the chnges necessary. Richard3120 (talk) 11:41, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

I believe I've fixed the Italian singles issue; see Template:Certification Table Entry/Sales/testcases for the values the template now spits out. Next? -- John of Reading (talk) 15:35, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes it is indeed working! I just removed the hardcoded sales from Ghosttown (Madonna song) which was released in 2015, and it correctly shows the platinum level of sales. Thanks a lot @John of Reading:. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 13:33, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

German singles sales

@John of Reading: have another one for you. Per German singles timeline, the sales for the singles after June 1, 2014 should be updated to 200,000 for Gold and 400,000 for platinum. I have already changed Template:Certification Table Entry/Sales to add the sales as shows here, but not able to understand how to update Template:Certification Table Entry/Sales/GermanPeriod to have the fourth parameter to be included. Can you please help? —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 21:55, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

 Done -- John of Reading (talk) 08:53, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Japan two different URLs

Hi @John of Reading:, another case I found out. Japan RIAJ in their index have three urls for certifications. Gold disc, Fee based and Million sellers annually. However {{Certification Cite/URL}} has only one url listed for Japan, resulting in some of the certifications for Gold disc not to be generated by the template. What can we do to include all three based on a certain switch? Hi @Harout72:, need your input here to understand the difference between the three certifications to add them to the template. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 12:13, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

There are two URLs for Physical albums/singles, one is this, and also the Million seller database here. The third one here is for the digital singles only.--Harout72 (talk) 13:20, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Revisit New Zealand sales

According to this and the very bottom of this, from June 2016, the NZ singles have 15,000 for Gold and 30,000 for Platinum now. @John of Reading: can I request you to see if you can update it in {{Certification Table Entry/Sales}} like how you did for the Italian sales? —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 13:27, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

We can achieve this by adding the certmonth as one of the template criteria and have an error message for whenever certyear >= 2016 and certmonth is missing. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 13:30, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

IndianBio: John's user page says he's on holiday for a week, so he may not get back to you immediately. But he has already altered the pre-2007 sales in the template's sandbox, because they were different between 1978 (when NZ certification started) and 1991, and again between 1992 and 2007 – see the discussion above at Template talk:Certification Table Entry#New Zealand sales. So this should be an easy addition to those sandbox changes and then if we can get consensus we can change all the New Zealand certification levels in one go. Richard3120 (talk) 15:20, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Richard. We will wait till John has returned as I'm not that good at the code jargon and should refrain from experimenting in the sandbox. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 15:32, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

@IndianBio and Richard3120: I'm back, in theory, but rather busy this weekend. I'll probably tackle this on Monday. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:46, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

John of Reading No problem at all, I think you're entitled to real life once in a while. ;-) I've (hopefully) added a link above to the Mediafire file where you can see a photo of the relevant page in the NZ chart book that states that NZ certifications from 1978–1991 were double the 1992–2007 levels. Richard3120 (talk) 15:56, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

@IndianBio and Richard3120: I've made edits to the sandbox, testcases and helper template. The live template is still unchanged. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:58, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: thank you, let me check and see if it is working now in any song. Thanks again. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 11:05, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: where can I check it? I tried coding it in a song article to see the sales, but didn't work. {{Certification Table Top}} {{Certification Table Entry/sandbox|region=New Zealand|artist=Katy Perry|type=single|award=Gold|relyear=2016|certyear=2016|year=2016|month=6|id=333|accessdate=July 18, 2016}} Can you let me know? —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 11:14, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

@IndianBio: The Template:Certification Table Entry/Sales/testcases page shows the gold/platinum figures that would be fed into the calculations used by the main template. I hope that's a good enough test. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:11, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

@IndianBio and John of Reading: just a comment that if the changes go live they should probably include the new streaming parameter that started last month, as requested below by Bluesatellite, but should exclude the pre-1992 changes that I suggested above... it's annoying but I accept Harout72's argument above that without actual, stated numbers, and without any proof that there were no changes to certifications between 1996 and 2001 (the former is the cut-off date for the book of NZ singles, see link in the previous NZ discussion above, and the latter is the earliest year I can find on webarchive for NZ certification levels up to 2007), any numbers we put into the template for before this date are WP:SYNTH. I will keep looking and see if I can get hold of some unambiguous data for this era of certifications. Richard3120 (talk) 15:07, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

It also means that from now on we should use symbol ‡, which indicates the inclusion of streaming in New Zealand's certifications. Oh God, people really don't buy music anymore. Bluesatellite (talk) 16:22, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

No, they don't, which is something that bothers Btljs and myself when editors claim that song X in 2016 has sold more than song Y which was released in 1996 – you're comparing apples and oranges. From a British point of view, a million-selling single in the UK used to be a real rarity and had real cachet – I think there were only about 70 in the first 50 years of the charts. Now there seem to be three new million-sellers announced every week. Richard3120 (talk) 22:45, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: you can implement the changes, it looks good. Used a dummy certification for the song "Rise" and it works. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 13:46, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@IndianBio, Richard3120, and Bluesatellite: Are you all happy with the date ranges and sales figures at Template:Certification Table Entry/Sales/testcases#New Zealand singles? I'll wait 24 hours. Someone needs to fill in the applicable sources at Template:Certification Table Entry/Sales/NewZealandPeriod/doc - that's a documentation page, so no special coding skills are needed there. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:25, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: yes I am happy with the update and I can see that the doc is already updated. Only need to move it to the main template. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 14:46, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@IndianBio: The documentation ought to list the sources that you have come up with. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:51, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: sorry I did that. Does it look fine now? —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 15:17, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I think we've reluctantly come to the conclusion (discussion above with Harout72) that we cannot implement the changes before 1992 as we do not have any actual stated figures for the 1978–1992 period, so for the time being we will have to stick with 5000/10000 for all certification levels before 2007. Richard3120 (talk) 16:19, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: This is now live, dividing the sales into only three periods. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:47, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Do the new levels from June 2016 onwards come up with the note that streaming is now included, as Bluesatellite suggested above? Richard3120 (talk) 16:21, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: No, I still need to work out where that symbol comes from. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:47, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I think it's in the Template:Certification Table Entry/Foot. I can see that New Zealand and Sweden are already in there, but they don't appear to have the coding that Italy, the UK and the US have in order to show that double dagger to indicate streaming. For New Zealand the date for singles is 10 November 2014 and for albums it's 17 June 2016. Sweden implemented streaming for singles AND albums on the same date on 29 October 2010.

Thank you so much for all your help by the way – I feel like we've overloaded you with requests! But the music industry and the way of calculating sales and certifications has changed so much and so quickly in the last few years, and unfortunately this project has struggled to keep up with the changes. Richard3120 (talk) 15:09, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

This has its own thread, at #More countries include streaming. I'll reply there. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:59, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: Me again. I realise now that I've coded this to use {{{year}}} and {{{month}}}, rather than {{{certyear}}} and {{{certmonth}}}. I wasn't aware of the distinction, and began by copying and adapting some nearby code which happened to use {{{year}}}. Which is correct for New Zealand? -- John of Reading (talk) 09:54, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: the active templates the sales vary if I use {{{relyear}}} and {{{relmonth}}}. So think they must be connected to {{{year}}} and {{{month}}}. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 09:56, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

What to do about links to certification websites that no longer work?

In the last year or so many of the websites Wikipedia uses to cite national music certifications have taken their awards off the website, for whatever reason – among the countries where you can no longer view gold and platinum awards are Argentina, Ireland (they've disappeared from IRMA; 2005 to 2012 awards are still available at irishcharts.ie, but nothing more recent) and the Netherlands (only a handful of 2008 awards available). I'm particularly concerned about still using the old citation for the Netherlands because adding the Certification Table Entry for the Netherlands and then clicking on the resulting link now just brings up some annoying and potentially harmful sales pop-up windows, which is probably against Wikipedia rules about linking to spam.

My thought would be to keep the coding in the template for now but disable it for "dead" countries, so it can't be used to cite certifications by well-intentioned editors who aren't aware that their addition will produce dead links in the certification table. If at some point in the future the certifications reappear the code can then be reactivated. But I'd like the opinions of other editors and see what they think. Richard3120 (talk) 21:15, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Addendum: As a result of the lack of Irish certifications being unavailable on the official IRMA website, some editors have started adding citations from Twitter and other social media accounts belonging to record labels, citing the fact that a record label should be a reliable source, even on social media. We really need a consensus on this otherwise we're going to get a lot of edit warring about whether social media is an RS in these cases. Richard3120 (talk) 01:24, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Seeing as we're on a roll updating the certification table template, any thoughts from IndianBio, Harout72 and John of Reading? (John, I know you don't probably don't have a particular opinion on the matter, I just wanted to know if my suggestion of disabling the code for these countries would be easy enough to implement if the idea goes ahead). Richard3120 (talk) 16:35, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes Richard, I think Netherlands, Argentina should be primarily discontinued for the timebeing. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 17:23, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Italy

Italy has demanded 25,000 sales for Gold again since february 2015. I found that mistake when reading in Birthday (Katy Perry song) that her Gold record (from 2015) would have been for 15,000 although the source actually says that it has been for 25,000. Could someone please correct that? Federazione_Industria_Musicale_Italiana#Singles says that as well. --SamWinchester000 (talk) 22:46, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

February 2015 comes much later than April 2014 which is when Perry's "Birthday" was released. So it is 15,000 units. The certification levels are applied to singles/albums/videos based on release dates. It is quite rare that certifying bodies apply the recent certification levels to all titles regardless of release date. SNEP and RIAA are, so far, the only ones that we know that apply the most recent levels to all release dates. Music Canada is another one that applies the most recent levels to singles only, albums levels for Canada, again are based on release dates.--Harout72 (talk) 00:58, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Stars on 45 (song)

This template appears to be causing problems at Stars on 45 (song)#Sales and certifications. It shows a gold single certification in the UK with 500,000 sales (which should be 400,000 instead) and a gold single certification in the USA with zero sales (which should be 500,000 instead). How can this be fixed? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:39, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

 Done it was missing the "certyear" parameter. And Metropolitan90, the 500,000 figure is correct - silver/gold/platinum certification levels in the UK were 250,000/500,000/1 million until 1989, and dropped to 200,000/400,000/600,000 from 1989 onwards. And likewise until 1989 in the US gold was 1 million sales and platinum 2 million, so the table shows 1 million in the US, not 500,000. Richard3120 (talk) 04:59, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I had thought the US requirements for a gold single might have been higher in the past, but I didn't have a source for that. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:55, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Metropolitan90: it's frustrating because when the US certification body RIAA revamped its website about 18 months ago, they removed all references to the certification levels having changed in 1989. This means that if you search for "Stars on 45" or any other single certified before 1989 and click on "more details", the certification award is correct but the sales levels shown are half of what they should be. It's poor that the official certification body is posting the wrong sales levels on their website, but it's impossible to contact RIAA and get them to do anything about it. However, they are definitely wrong – here is a link to scans of the Hot 100 from Billboard magazine for each week of 1981... if you scroll down to page 29 of 52 in this PDF (chart date July 18, 1981) you will see that "Stars on 45" at no. 12 obtained its gold certification that week, indicated by a black dot. And if you look underneath the chart bottom left, it says the black dot represents 1 million sales, and the triangle represents 2 million sales (this was the platinum award). In the issue of Billboard dated November 12, 1988 is the official announcement (top left of page 1) that the certification levels would be halved from January 1, 1989 to their current levels. And the various "Billboard Hot 100" books by Joel Whitburn, considered the "bibles" of US chart history, also state clearly in the introduction the various certification levels and how they have changed over the years. So I really don't know why RIAA can't get their website correct. Richard3120 (talk) 15:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

More countries include streaming

I guess I'm suck at wiki code, so I'm asking for help. Btljs, Magiciandude, or anyone, please update the footnotes for New Zealand and Sweden with the inclusion of streaming. Sweden incorporated streaming into album and single certification since January 2010, while New Zealand since June 2016. Thanks in advance. Bluesatellite (talk) 19:02, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120, Bluesatellite, and IndianBio: I have a new version ready in Template:Certification Table Entry/Foot/sandbox, with test cases at Template:Certification Table Entry/Foot/testcases. This uses {{{certyear}}} not {{{year}}}. To make this live I'll also have to edit Template:Certification Table Entry itself to pass |certmonth= down to it. I'll copy this to the live template after the weekend if no one objects. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:01, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: In these edits, above, you mention some different start-of-streaming dates. Can you check which are correct? -- John of Reading (talk) 17:02, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: – they are all correct. Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce streaming into its sales calculations in 2010, and they did it for both singles and albums. Other countries introduced it for just singles at first, with albums coming later. In New Zealand streaming for singles started in November 2014 and for NZ albums the change was only made last month. Likewise, the UK Singles Chart introduced streaming in June 2014, but the UK Albums Chart has only included streaming since March 2015. I don't know if the current code for the UK makes the distinction between the two dates, or if it causes problems to have different dates. Richard3120 (talk) 17:19, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: I've updated the sandbox and the testcases to display a double dagger for Sweden and New Zealand after the required dates. Since these changes occur in the middle of their months, I'll have to add a "certday" parameter to the main template and its documentation. Could you look at the testcases page to see that I've stated the requirements correctly there?

The code for the United Kingdom displays a dagger for singles from January 2014, and never for albums. I think I'd prefer to put the Sweden and New Zealand changes live before tackling this one. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:12, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Pinging Btljs, IndianBio, Bluesatellite and Harout72 who may have an interest in testing this out and checking the dates. I'm afraid I'm a bit slow and having trouble understanding the "missing day" part of the code. Richard3120 (talk) 15:05, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: Re "missing day" - For example, suppose this is a Swedish album. If the caller passes in certyear=2010 and certmonth=10 but doesn't specify the day, the code cannot decide whether the date is before or after 29 October 2010. It currently outputs neither symbol, to be on the safe side. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:17, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: thanks, I've got it now. Richard3120 (talk) 15:49, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: Are you happy for this to go live? -- John of Reading (talk) 06:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I'm missing something here: I can't get the testcases to display the double dagger for streaming for recent cases, they stay with the asterisk and circumflex. Richard3120 (talk) 17:03, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: The test cases at Template:Certification Table Entry/Foot/testcases show the switch to the double dagger. I can't see that you've edited any test case pages recently - on what page are you having trouble? -- John of Reading (talk) 17:16, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I didn't save any of my changes, that's why you can't see them. I'm going to be away for the next week, so I won't have time to check this now – I'll look into it again when I get back. Richard3120 (talk) 05:09, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I'm having trouble with the Latin certifications in the United States. The Latin digital singles awards began on December 2013, (source), but when I input certifications for Latin digital singles in 2014, its marked as ship. Also, the template needs the diamond award for Latin certifications, (source for its existenc). 1,000,000 for diamante certifications prior to December 20, 2013 and 600,000 after that date. Erick (talk) 18:46, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

@Magiciandude: This is the issue discussed below, isn't it? I'd rather work on one issue at a time so that the sandbox edits aren't so complicated. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

BVMI Germany site updated

BVMI have updated their website and the Gold/Platinum database now has a new address – consequently all links to German certifications now go to a dead link. The new address is "http://www.musikindustrie.de/nc/datenbank/" but I can't for the life of me find where to change this... I assume it's in one of the helper templates. If someone could please put me out of my misery and change this website address so all the German certification links work again, please. Thanks. Richard3120 (talk) 02:20, 30 September 2016 (UTC) Update: speaking with the template creator Muhandes I now know it's located in {{Certification Cite/URL}}. I'll try out the change and hope I don't break anything. Richard3120 (talk) 16:31, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

CAPIF certifications are based on shipments, not sales

While looking for sales of Nada Es Igual (Luis Miguel album) in Latin America, I came across this article by Billboard which states that CAPIF bases their certifications on shipments, not sales. Erick (talk) 17:23, 2 October 2016 (UTC)