There are gold and platinum record awards certified and manufactured around the world, and knowledgeable collectors who have wonderful collections. Today I thank German collector Tim Klingenberg for sharing some of his photos and information on German Awards. So without further ado, may I introduce you to Tim…
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Thanks to Jim for spotlighting this, and to Britta Lüerssen for support.
As many of you, I started my collecting career with RIAA awards. Over the years the number of my awards began to rise and so the countries of their origin. My first “foreign” non-RIAA awards were CRIA (Canada), BPI (British) which were followed by various German record awards. I now want to give you an overview of the history of German awards, different styles and changes over the last decades.
History
In 1975 the German pendent of the RIAA, the so called Bundesverband der phonographischen Wirtschaft e.V., started its gold and platinum award program. At this point there was no catchy acronym, but in fall 2007 the association was renamed as Bundesverband Musikindustrie with the official short cut BVMI – so I will use this acronym throughout the text to simplify matters.
Interestingly, the BVMI has no guide lines regarding the form or style of awards, and there are also no licensed manufacturers. So there are various styles of frames, mattes and even plates. Not to mention that sometimes there are different texts engraved. But the plate must be ordered at BVMI so they check the sold copies etc., just like the RIAA procedure.
Here are some pictures of German gold/platinum awards from different periods…
George McCrae – Rock your baby 1974
Elvis Presley Platinum – 1977
The Cure – Gold, 1990
Gold Single 1990
Cher – Gold award, 1991
Destinys Child – gold CD (change of logo)
Sales Achievement
To achieve gold status both singles and albums had to sell more than 250,000 units, to be certified platinum 500,000 units were necessary. But as record sales decreased in Germany, so the barrier of gold and platinum status had to be adapted. This happened twice, in 1999 sales to achieve gold dropped to 150,000 and platinum to 300,000. Four years later, in 2003, the quantities required became 100,000 for gold and 200,000 for platinum. (There are multi-gold and multi-platinum awards as well.)
Emblems & Plates
Like many other associations the BVMI changed their emblems over the last 36 years of the award program’s existence, as you can see on the pictures. Most of the changes were done because of organizational reasons but the launch of the hologram can also be seen as BVMI’s reaction to the rise of fake awards.
From 1975 to mid midyear 1995 it was an Arrow-Emblem. From 1995 through 2007 it was a Note-Emblem. And from 2007 it was the Frequency-Emblem with a gold and silver hologram added in 2010.
In the beginning the BVMI supplied manufacturers with brass plates with engraved emblems, so they only had to engrave the text. But later, due to cost reduction, the BVMI gave the emblem’s printing/engraving dates to the bigger manufacturers. Since than, plates are not necessarily made of brass and can now be either a matte or shiny finish. Even laminated paper plates are now possible.
Manufacturers
The most interesting thing about BVMI awards is that there are no licensed manufacturers. But over several years a few frame shops could establish as main suppliers of record companies. Most notably: “Gravier-Werkstätten Heinz G. Helfer” and “Südwerkstatt”.
Manufacturer Helfer
Manufacturer Südwerkstätten
Construction
Lack of guidelines by the BVMI for the award manufacturing leads to a various amount of different award styles, not only of frames, glasses and even of presentation plates and texts. Some texts are in German, some in English, and some even contain the contribution of the recipient.
For the LP awards, metal LPs were used, no vinyl. And like BPI awards, it was the original record with metal stamper.
