What’s the bag look like on a platinum single? Part 1 ft/ Corbett

Platinum is a unit count, not a feeling. The RIAA certifies a single platinum at one million units, and since 2016 a unit can be assembled out of streams at a hundred and fifty on-demand audio streams apiece. So a platinum single is a million downloads, or a hundred and fifty million streams, or some mix of the two that adds up.

That is the number everybody quotes. It tells you almost nothing about what lands in the producer's account, because the producer is not paid on units. The producer is paid on points.

What a point actually is

A producer's fee is usually structured as an advance plus points on the record. Three points is common, five if you have leverage. A point is a percentage of the artist's royalty rate, which means it comes out of the artist's share rather than being added on top. This is the part that surprises people the first time: you are not negotiating with the label so much as negotiating with the artist over how their slice gets divided.

Points are also generally recoupable. The advance you were paid comes off the top of what the points earn before anything new arrives, and on most deals the artist's own recoupment has to clear first.

Why the timing is worse than the math

Streaming money moves through several hands before it reaches a producer, and each hand operates on its own accounting cycle. A record that goes platinum in March is not a March payday. Statements typically run on six-month periods with a lag behind them, so the first real accounting can be a year out, and the corrections keep arriving after that.

None of which is an argument against chasing it. It is an argument for knowing which number you are actually being told when someone says a record went platinum.

Corbett has been on the receiving end of this more than once. He breaks the figure down in the video at the top of this page, and part two picks it up from there.