Originally Posted by
Strange
Well Florence, all I can see are logical comparisons as my basis for anything and everything I state about sales, plus I make sure I fully understand and research the industry and exactly the way things were for the period and country under consideration before I comment. If I'm not sure I don't post.
So maybe I should point out the facts that are wrong in your post above that will have misled the [[very?) few others who might be following or caring about all this? Firstly, there is no difference at all between a BPI award from their inaugural awards starting in April 1973 in the UK and those presented by Disc & Music Echo magazine [[indeed not as mottony said Record Mirror, but that was no doubt a slip of the memory) since March 1959. It is wrong to say otherwise, and all I can think is perhaps you were under a misapprehension of some kind of independent audit taking place when the BPI got involved, such as arranged by the RIAA here in the States?
So for everyone who cares, please understand that the silver, gold, platinum and beyond certification award system in Great Britain has always been run on the basis of trust, involving a simple declaration from the record company concerned that a sales level had been achieved. A very British thing, but there has never been anything else required. The only adjustment when the BPI became involved was the requirement for the request for certification letter to be signed by a Certified or Chartered Accountant or other financial officer within the employ of the label/company as it was felt they had a professional code that they would not wish to jeopardise over something as trivial as a sales award. Nothing more.
Secondly, the fact that some company's may not have applied was entirely up to them and matters not very much as there are more than enough who did get involved to make them visible from any studied look at the charts - that is unless one feels the charts are also a waste of time in terms of reflecting sales patterns?. There is a world of difference between writing a letter and deciding to 'fib' about a claim and allowing outside auditors in to consider your accounts, which is what Berry Gordy clearly didn't want to have happen in the States. I don't blame him, and the RIAA knew full well that doing things on trust would never work.
But back to the facts again about those silver discs in the UK. On the other thread discussing some outlandish sales claims for 'Stoned Love' it was stated that this Top 30 Selling Motown Singles list existed and had the single at 355k. I said in a post at the top of this page that Motony's observation about the UK silver disc award scheme was probably all I or anyone needed to consider to see that the list had to be suspect. I didn't think I needed to elaborate. We then had Roger post his surprise that 'There's A Ghost In My House' was missing, to which I also agreed and pointed out that it had one a silver disc, implying but not dreaming that I had to spell out the obvious that 'Stoned Love' hadn't managed to get a silver award.
If it was all just about the No. 3 position of the two records Florence I'd be with you and could not comment on the likely veracity of the Motown list. But we have one with an award and one without, and on the same label. All I can imagine again is for some reason you think the R Dean Taylor didn't 'go silver', but I can assure you it very much did around 6th July 1974. So what we have here - and there are plenty more examples that I could site - is very much proof to the contrary that this list [[with or without the imaginary sales appended by some enthusiastic soul) is far from correct. That is unless anyone reckons 'Stoned Love' was both overlooked by EMI/Motown for an award and/or could seriously have gone on to exceed 'Ghost' by a further 105k.
Finally, I really don't know what you are trying to say about the OCC so I'll let that go. Suffice to say they have no access to anything other than the Millward Brown retail data in the same way that Billboard has to Soundscan information. They pay a licence fee and get what they pay for - just as you or I could.