The RIAA has announced Jay Z's new album 4:44 has been certified platinum. The announcement came with a photo of Hov standing next to his new plaque, along with the message: "Props to JAY, he’s done it again!"
It's also up on the RIAA site:
Congrats to Jay! But also, how Sway?
In addition to the Tidal stream, the album was also available as a free download option that popped up over the weekend. Those free downloads, Billboardreported, were purchased by Sprint for distribution and counted toward the platinum certification. A Roc Nation rep clarified that the certification reflected one million in downloads and that "no streams" were applied.
According to Variety, the photo opp took place before 4:44 was released. The massive first week success certainly has shades of the Samsung deal. If you remember, that deal included an automatic one million downloads of his album Magna Carta Holy Grail for Samsung users.
