Parental Advisory
Parental Advisory (abbreviated as PAL or PA) is a voluntary warning label placed on audio recordings in recognition of inappropriate references, such as violence, sexual content or profanity, with the intention of alerting parents of material potentially unsuitable for children. It was introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1987 and adopted by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in 2011. The label was first affixed on physical 33 1/3 rpm records, compact discs and cassette tapes, and it has been included on digital listings offered by online music stores. In PAL-region territories, some video games featuring licensed music were affixed with the label in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
This article is about the warning label used by the music industry. For other uses, see Parental Advisory (disambiguation).Recordings with the Parental Advisory label are often released alongside a censored version that reduces or eliminates the objectionable material. Several retailers will distribute both versions of the product, occasionally with an increased price for the censored version, while some sellers offer the amended pressing as their main option and choose not to distribute the explicit counterpart. The label has been widely criticized as ineffective in limiting the inappropriate material to which young audiences are exposed.
Edited counterparts[edit]
It is fairly common for an album which received the Parental Advisory seal to be sold alongside an "edited" version which removes objectionable content, usually to the same level as a radio edit. The RIAA Guidelines however state "an Edited Version need not remove all potentially objectionable content from the sound recording."[18] These albums are packaged nearly-identically to their explicit counterparts, usually with the only indicator being the lack of Parental Advisory seal, although if the artwork is deemed 'explicit' too, it will normally be censored. In the case of some albums, a black box reading "EDITED VERSION" is placed where the Parental Advisory seal would be. This was part of new guidelines introduced on April 1, 2002, which also included a label that featured "Edited Version Also Available" next to the Parental Advisory seal.[19]