The Hot 100 Airplay chart ranks the most frequently broadcast songs on US radio stations, published by ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' magazine. Prior to December 1990, radio stations were simply asked what songs were on their playlists and what songs have recently been added.
Nielsen BDS
Broadcast Data Systems (also known as BDS or Luminate BDS), is a service that tracks radio, television and internet airplay of songs. The service, which is a unit of MRC Data, is a contributing factor to North American charts published by co-owned ...
was introduced in ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' in January 1990 and first used on the ''Billboard''
Country music chart. ''Billboard'' introduced the Top 40 Radio Monitor on December 8, 1990, as a BDS-monitored airplay chart for comparison to the Hot 100 airplay-component chart, which was determined by radio playlists. The Top 40 Radio Monitor became the official airplay component of the Hot 100 with the issue dated November 30, 1991, when the methodology of the Hot 100 was changed to utilize both BDS (airplay) and
Soundscan
Luminate (formerly Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen Music Products, and MRC Data) is a provider of music sales data. Established by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett in 1991, data is collected weekly and made available every Sunday (for albums sales) and eve ...
(sales) technology. BDS measures actual airplay by monitoring radio stations continuously with computers that "listen for the unique 'audio fingerprint' of each song and register a detection every time a song is played."
One of the first noticeable effects of the change in methodology was that there tended to be less turnover of the top songs. Before the switch, no song had spent at least ten weeks at number one on the Hot 100 Airplay chart, but from December 1990 until the end of the decade, 17 songs had a minimum ten-week run at the top of the chart. While the BDS technology may have had some impact as to why this was happening, the cause has also been attributed to the trends of the radio industry at the time with stations playing the same songs over longer periods of time.
In the mid-1990s, a new trend began to emerge: singles without being released commercially in an attempt to boost album sales. While not a new concept, it started becoming commonplace.
With the June 17, 1995, issue, "
I'll Be There for You", became the first single to top the Hot 100 Airplay chart without appearing on the Hot 100.
(It would later peak at No. 17 on the Hot 100 when released as a B-side to
the Rembrandts
The Rembrandts are an American alternative rock duo, formed by Danny Wilde and Phil Solem in 1989. They had previously worked together as members of Great Buildings in 1981. The Rembrandts are best known for the song " I'll Be There for You", ...
follow-up single, "This House Is Not a Home", combined with its continued but fading dominance on the radio.) More songs followed with tracks such as "
Don't Speak
"Don't Speak" is a song by American rock band No Doubt from their third studio album, ''Tragic Kingdom'' (1995). It was released as the third single from ''Tragic Kingdom'' in the United States on April 15, 1996, by Interscope Records. Lead sin ...
", "
Men in Black
In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are purported men dressed in black suits who claim to be quasi-government agents, who harass, threaten, or sometimes even assassinate unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesses t ...
", "
Fly
Flies are insects of the Order (biology), order Diptera, the name being derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwing ...
", "
Torn", and "
Iris
Iris most often refers to:
*Iris (anatomy), part of the eye
*Iris (mythology), a Greek goddess
* ''Iris'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants
* Iris (color), an ambiguous color term
Iris or IRIS may also refer to:
Arts and media
Fictional ent ...
", each becoming the most played song on American pop radio, despite being ineligible to chart on the Hot 100 itself due to a lack of a commercially available single. While this practice did not end, in the ''Billboard'' issue dated December 5, 1998, policy was revised to allow "airplay-only" songs to chart on the Hot 100.
Number-one airplay hits
See also
*
1990s in music
Popular music in the 1990s saw the continuation of teen pop and dance-pop trends which had emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, hip hop grew and continued to be highly successful in the decade, with the continuation of the genre' ...
*
List of Hot 100 number-one singles of the 1990s (U.S.)
This article is about the American ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart held during the 1990s.
The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart is the main song chart of the American music industry and is updated every week by the ''Billboard'' magazine. During the 1990 ...
Notes and references
Additional sources
*Whitburn, Joel. ''The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits.'' (2004)
Billboard Biz
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hot 100 Airplay 1990s
United States Hot 100 Airplay
Billboard charts
Lists of number-one songs in the United States
1990s in American music