Music Canada’s Gold Platinum Awards Program was launched in 1975 to celebrate milestone sales of music in Canada. With over 14,000 albums, singles, digital downloads, ringtones, and music videos certified over the past 35 years, the program provides a unique historical timeline of popular music in Canada.

Given that we’ve just passed the halfway point of 2016, we decided to sort through Music Canada’s data to check out which Canadian artists reached one of those coveted milestones this year. No prizes for guessing that the usual suspects (Drake, The Weeknd and Justin Bieber) made the list, but you may be surprised at some of the lesser-known names we discovered.

For instance, Ruth B registered a platinum digital download for her hit “Lost Boy” on June 14, the same day David Bowie notched a platinum album for Blackstar. On May 11, Dany Fernandes scored a gold single for digital downloads for “Dear Life,” a day before Drake’s album Views was certified platinum. Belly is now best-known for co-writing hits for The Weeknd, but on May 10 he scored gold for the digital downloads of his track “Might Not,” one featuring The Weeknd as guest.

The Weeknd fared well too, of course, going three times platinum for “The Hills” and gold for “In The Night” (both as digital downloads).

Justin Bieber reached the quadruple platinum plateau twice in May, for his album Purpose and for the digital download sales of “Love Yourself,” while “Sorry” reached that digital download mark in April.

Two up and coming groups grabbed certifications in April. Roots-rockers The Strumbellas went digital download gold for “Spirits,” while High Valley duplicated that feat with “Make You Mine,” following an earlier gold digital award for “Country Line.”

Marianas Trench mined digital download gold for “One Love,” while Virginia to Vegas scored platinum for their hit track “We Are Stars,” featuring Alyssa Reid.

Quebecois artists with reason to celebrate included Louis Jean-Cormier (a gold albuim for Les Grands Arteres), 2 Freres (gold album for Nous Autres), and Half Moon Run (gold album for Sun Leads Me On), while the La Voix 1V album went platinum.

Mia Martina fared very well, notching digital download gold for her tracks “Heartbreaker” and “Beast,” plus a double platinum award for "Stereo Love.”

Diana Krall’s Wallflower album was awarded platinum, while George Canyon’s Classics went gold, and Walk Off the Earth claimed a platinum digital download award for “Rule The World.”

The trophy case for Deadmau5 became more crammed this year, as he notched triple platinum for “Ghosts N Stuff” and platinum for “Sofi Needs A Ladder” (both digital downloads) as well as gold album certifications for Random Album Title and For Lack Of A Better Name.

Coleman Hell scored a double platinum digital download award for his breakthrough “2 Heads,” with Alessia Cara going platinum for “Here.”

It has been a very good year to date for Shawn Mendes. His hit “Stitches” was certified double platinum (digital download), with his album Handwritten awarded platinum last month.

For more information on the Gold Platinum awards program, go to musiccanada.com/gold-platinum