“Shipments” to stores is indeed a sale. Retailers buy physical copies from recording companies. What did you think they were on loan?

Regardless of what you think of the certification process, it still is a Platinum album that is held to the same certification process as any box set would be so that doesn’t “cheapen” the fact that it’s a Platinum recording. It wasn’t some “marketing gimmick,” either. it’s a project that resonated with fans and has sold well enough to be ordered/bought 250,000+ times.

I don’t think because it had a Top 40 hit and two lesser singles (one which didn’t chart) that failed to do as well means the project wasn’t a success and a marvelous showcase of a talented and down right inspired artist at work. I think there are FEW artists who could’ve come out with such a project and had it become the cohesive success it was, both commercially, critically and for Vince and all involved in making it, spiritually.

But it goes totally off the rails when it comes to box sets and multiple CD packages. According to what I’ve always read in Billboard, a “Gold” album is one with shipments of 500,000 units and a “platinum” album is one with shipments of a million. But according to the fine print, when a package has multiple discs, they multiply the number of sales by the number of discs in the box in order to “certify” it. And they do that even if it’s priced at less than half as much per disc as a standard release.So a 4-cd box gets certified “platinum” with shipments of only a quarter-of-a-million.

I think most people remember when Garth Brooks seemed to be obsessed with catching Elvis or the Beatles and being recognized as the biggest selling artist of all-time, he would package 6 of his old CDs in one box and offer it for sale at deep discount for about the price of 2 cd’s. Then they’d move or ship half a million of the boxes and they’d add another 3 million to his tally.

That project was certified Platinum. He Won Grammy Awards, was nominated for many other awards and the project landed on many major best-of lists for 2006, the year it came out. Also, last time I checked, it’s the last few months of 2011 and “These Days” came out in 2006? Five years ago. looks like if he’d released each of those albums over that same period, he’d have been where we are now, a new record.

Well, it certainly earned him respect. Everything I read about it at the time of the release was very respectful. Even reverential.
But who remembers the songs? It’s just lunacy to take all of an artist’s output over 7-plus years and throw it all on the market in one day.