Hot R&B Airplay

R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay (previously known as Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay) is a chart published by Billboard magazine that ranks the top R&B and hip hop songs in the United States based on audience impressions from a panel of radio stations monitored by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems. It was also used in sister publication R&R, which listed the chart as Urban National Airplay. The chart is not the R&B/hip-hop subset of the Hot 100 Airplay chart, but rather uses a separate panel of R&B stations in urban and urban adult contemporary markets. It was the primary airplay component chart of the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart until the issue dated October 20, 2012, when Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs was revamped to include digital sales, streaming, and airplay from all radio formats. The Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart encompasses two separate airplay charts, both of which are based on radio spins rather than audience impressions: Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop and Adult R&B Airplay, which measure airplay on urban contemporary and urban adult contemporary stations respectively.

There are fifty positions on the chart, which is solely based on radio airplay. 77 R&B and hip-hop 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 does not 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.

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