Rhythmic Airplay Chart

The Rhythmic Airplay Chart (often also called Rhythmic Top 40 or CHR/Rhythmic chart) is an airplay chart that is featured weekly in Billboard Magazine. The chart tracks and measures the airplay of songs played on Rhythmic stations, whose playlist includes mostly hit-driven R&B/Hip-Hop, Rhythmic pop, and some Dance tracks. Arbitron sometimes refers to the format as Rhythmic Contemporary Hit Radio.

History

Billboard magazine first took notice of the newly emerged genre on February 15, 1987, when it launched the first crossover chart. The first number one on that chart was "Looking for a New Love" by Jody Watley and it originally consisted of thirty titles and eighteen stations reporting to the panel. But by December 1990 Billboard eliminated the chart because more top 40 and R&B stations were becoming identical with the rhythmic-heavy playlist that were also being played at the crossover stations at the time.

Billboard would later revive the chart again in October 1992 as the Top 40 rhythm/crossover chart, with "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men as the first number one on the revived chart. On June 25, 1997, it was renamed the Rhythmic Top 40 chart as a way to distinguish stations that continue to play a broad based rhythmic mix from those whose mix leaned heavily toward R&B and hip-hop.

The current Rhythmic Top 40 number-one single for the issue dated February 4, 2012, is "Good Feeling" by Flo Rida.

Chart criteria

There are forty positions on this chart and it is solely based on radio airplay. Rhythmic Airplay is a component chart of the Billboard Hot 100. 72 Rhythmic radio stations are electronically monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems. Songs are ranked by a calculation of the total number of spins per week with its "audience impression", which is based upon exact times of airplay and each station's Arbitron listener data.

Songs receiving the greatest growth will receive a "bullet", although there are tracks that will also get bullets if the loss in detections doesn't exceed the percentage of downtime from a monitored station. "Airpower" awards are issued to songs that appear on the top 20 of both the airplay and audience chart for the first time, while the "greatest gainer" award is given to song with the largest increase in detections. A song with six or more spins in its first week is awarded an "airplay add". If a song is tied for the most spins in the same week, the one with the biggest increase that previous week will rank higher, but if both songs show the same amount of spins regardless of detection the song that is being played at more stations is ranked higher. Songs that fall below the top 20 and have been on the chart after 26 weeks are removed and go to recurrent status.

See also

• Dance/Mix Show Airplay
• Top 40 Mainstream
• List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Rhythmic chart

External links

• Current rhythmic chart featured in Radio-Info.com