In a relative kind of way, anyhow. The news is purloined from Blabbermouth:
DREAM THEATER’s “Score” two-DVD set has been officially certified platinum by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). The set, which sold more than 14,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Music Video chart, contains DREAM THEATER’s entire “20th Anniversary World Tour” grand finale recorded live at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on April 1, 2006 (nearly three hours of music  over 90 minutes of which was performed with a full orchestra). The DVD also includes a one-hour documentary tracking the entire career of the band from the very beginnings at the Berklee College Of Music in 1985 all the way to the Radio City Music Hall grand finale. It also features rare, never-before-seen footage and interviews with current and previous members of the band, plus several live bonus tracks from through the years taken from the archives of drummer Mike Portnoy.
DREAM THEATER recently ended its longtime collaboration with Atco/EastWest Records/The Atlantic Group and is currently in talks with several labels about a possible new record deal. In addition, the group has entered a New York City studio with engineer Paul Northfield (RUSH, QUEENSRŸCHE, SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, MARILYN MANSON) to begin recording its follow-up to 2005’s “Octavarium”, tentatively due next spring. “We’ve written about half the album at this point and have tracked the drums and the guitars for that much,” Portnoy revealed during an appearance last Friday (Oct. 6) on the “Friday Night Rocks” radio show on New York’s Q104.3 FM. “We’re booked through January at this point; me and John [Petrucci] have a few breaks for G3 tours. Basically, we’re looking to finish up January/February. Then it takes a couple of months for the label to set it up and get it out. So we’re hoping by spring  April or May is what we’re hoping for  and hitting the road by the summertime. That’s the general schedule that we’ve penciled in.’
On the band’s current label negotiations, Portnoy said, “We didn’t wanna sit around waiting to close up the deal and deal with all the legal paperwork and all that, and have to wait until all that was done to start the record, so we booked the studio time  we wanted to start the record  so we started a month ago. But we’ve been meeting with lots of labels since we are here in New York [City recording], and I think we’re probably days to weeks away from making a decision and making an announcement.”
“We’ve done all of this pretty much on our own at this point. The labels thus far have”¦ With the exception of our heyday 15 years ago, with ‘Images and Words’ and everything  other than that, we’ve pretty much just built this thing on our own, so it’ll be amazing to see what we can do with a little bit of support.”
PLATINUM, you’re saying?!? Impressive! But before you go crazy, here’s how this works:
In the US, for an album to be certified platinum, it has to ship a million copies. Not sell, but ship. They won’t issue certification if they don’t expect the album to actually hit that sales mark, but indeed, this has nothing to do with SoundScan or a gnome who sits by the register counting things.
Note I said album. Music DVDs, on the other hand, are certified platinum at 100,000 units shipped.
Now, note that Score is a 2-DVD set. Each set counts as two. Therefore, the Score DVD has actually shipped 50,000 copies that are expected to sell.
And with that, the whole “platinum” moniker has lost its luster. How I live to shoot holes in the hot air balloons of superstar egos.
Anyway, the other news of this particular quoted chunk is that DT are hunting for a new record label.
Now, it’s no secret that I love the band, and it’s also no secret that their fanbase makes my crotch curl up and die. Upon reading some fan comments about where Dream Theater should plunk their ass to a contract, so many were encouraging them to attach to a small prog label somewhere. I can only imagine the motivation there would be to use their name value to sell discs by sub-par prog bands. Or to land them even further into obscurity and make their records hard to find. Or to give them no budget so that Jordan Rudess has to sell crack at his online conservatory to support his Haken Continuum Fingerboard habit.
DT changing labels at this point is a dangerous, dangerous game if they expect to keep a happy and smiling career. After years with The Atlantic Group, they had won themselves plenty of respect and freedom to pretty much do whatever they wanted artistically. The only deal that could possibly be better for them at this point would have to include this same freedom but also with active label promotion. Now, what tiny little prog label is going to be able to give them that? Freedom, it’s theirs to be found in spades all over the indie parket. But cashola? Pimpage? The tinies, they don’t have budgets for that sort of thing.
However, most of the larger labels at this point are going to want something to sell. Yes, any DT release is guaranteed to sell at least 50,000 copies. It’s nice to have that guarantee. But that’s not the kind of money that helps balance out a label’s profit margin. See, for every success, there are 100 failures. Fifty thousand copies will make up for their own costs of recording, touring, and promotion, but not a bunch of other bands that have tossed label money into the toilet.
Dream Theater, listen up, and listen good: grab another big label and grab ’em good. Make some songs that aren’t a half an hour long. Try to work your magic within a verse-chorus-verse structure once in a while, something you did incredibly well on your first few albums. Give the label something to work with, something worth their promotional dollars. This is not selling out; this is good sense. Ever listen to Rush, Dream Theater? Hear the songs of theirs that get constant classic rock radio play? They’re one of the most well-known and well-respected prog bands, guys. If you can’t create quality progressive music that appeals to those outside of prog circles, you fail. You fail.
Sincerely, the girl with your logo tattooed on her back.
