On November 14th, RISA sent a notification to its members advising that it had decided to reduce the levels of certification for Gold and Platinum sales to 20,000 for Gold and 40,000 for Platinum.

Citing comparisons with other International territories doing similar music turnover -  such as New Zealand , Taiwan , Finland and Austria amongst others - RISA claimed that it "was more difficult to achieve Gold and Platinum certification in South Africa.”

AIRCO, the Association of Independent Recording Companies of South Africa , strongly disagrees with RISA’s conclusions.

RISA’s own statistics show that in the last year, sales of International product has declined by some 11,2%, whilst sales of local, i.e. South African music has shown strong growth to the extent of 19,1%. AIRCO firmly believes that a lowering of the required certification levels is solely beneficial with regard to sales of International product, and enables the Major multinationals, (Sony/BMG, EMI, Universal and Warner’s), to continue reporting Gold and Platinum awards to their overseas principles, whilst ignoring the growth in domestic repertoire.

To lower the benchmark at a time when sales of South African music is enjoying significant sustainable growth, cheapens the achievement of our artistes accomplishments, particularly when measured against sales by International artistes in South Africa.

As the Industry body that represents only South African record companies and their interests, AIRCO has decided therefore to accept the responsibility for Certification of sales for South African releases, and to continue at the levels that existed previously, i.e. 25,000 for Gold and 50,000 for Platinum.DVD Certification will be 10,000 for Gold and 20,000 for Platinum.

The Executive Committee of AIRCO believes that this will more realistically reflect South African market conditions, and maintain the value of our artiste’s achievements with regard to sales in our country.