Damien Leith's 'Where We Land' album is continuing at snail's pace on its way to selling 70,000 units, the level for platinum in Australia. Last week, the album sold a further 1,852 units, bringing the total so far to 42,751.
Leith has already received a platinum award for the record despite a shortfall of more than 30,000 units at the time of the presentation.He currently has 27,249 units to sell before what has sold into stores matches customer sales.
In Australia, sales to the general public are irrelevant to Gold and Platinum accreditations. Only sales to stores are counted, despite the fact that stores can return unsold units.
As ARIA does not "balance the books" between sales to stores and stores to customers and labels do not report returns to ARIA, artists can easily be awarded platinum without ever really achieving it.
Case in point was Idol winner Casey Donovan, who received a triple platinum award for her album. One chain told Undercover that they alone returned platinum for undersold units to the label.
'Where We Land' has landed outside the Top 30 this week. The album has fallen to number 32 after only 7 weeks on the chart.
Even if the Leith album can maintain last week's sales figures, 'Where We Land' won't really be platinum for another 15 weeks, putting it into 2008.
Here's a reality check for the reality show byproduct ... it's not going to happen.
