RIAA

Abbreviation for the Recording Industry Association of America. Founded in 1952, the RIAA primarily exists to be an advocate for recording artists and record companies. They are perhaps most known for the cool gold, and platinum awards given to groups for record sales, but they are also very involved in anti-piracy issues as well as other standards and concerns of the recording industry. For example, they established the technical standards for LP records. The RIAA equalization curve is still used today in phono pre amps for playing back records. They are also largely responsible for the SCMS copy protection we’ve had to contend with in DAT machines.