The crossover success of Black artistsPrince (left) andMichael Jackson (right) to white audiences contributed toBillboard's creation of the Hot Crossover 30;[1] both reached number one in the chart's first year.[2][3]
Hot Crossover 30 was a weeklyrecord chart published by American magazineBillboard that ranked the 30 top-performing songs on "crossover" radio stations in the United States featuring a combination ofBlack,dance andpop music. It was first published in the February 28, 1987, issue ofBillboard.[4] The chart was renamed Top 40/Dance on September 9, 1989,[5] and last published on December 1, 1990.[6] Unlike the guitar-orientedrock music heard oncontemporary hit radio stations at the time, songs that appeared on the Hot Crossover 30 were often typified by their up-tempo nature, featureddrum machines andelectronic keyboards, and had varied dance, pop, andR&B influences.[7]Club Nouveau's "Lean on Me" was the first of 65 different songs that topped the chart, andMariah Carey's "Love Takes Time" was the last.[8][9]
To formulate the chart,Billboard created a panel of crossover radio stations which reported their currentplaylists by rank every week. The magazine converted these ranks to points using aweighting system based on the station'sArbitron rating. The most-played song on a station received a base of 25 points while songs ranked below number 40 received 5 points. The points were multiplied 0.5 times if it was played by a station with a weekly cumulative audience of under 100,000 people, 1 time if the station had an audience between 100,000 and 249,999, 1.5 times if the station had an audience between 250,000 and 499,999, 2 times if the station had an audience between 500,000 and 999,999, and 2.5 times if the station had an audience over 1 million. Songs were eligible to chart regardless of a commercial release, as long as they received a combined 175 points from at least 10 stations.[10]
Hot Crossover 30 allowed programmers at burgeoning crossover stations to observe the national popularity of songs on similar stations, some of which had been previously unrecognized because such stations did not contribute to any otherBillboard chart.[7] The Hot Crossover 30 panel of stations originally included those that reported exclusively to the chart and some that also reported to either theHot 100 orHot Black Singles charts.[10] Effective September 9, 1989, stations formerly exclusive to the Hot Crossover 30 panel also contributed to the Hot 100.[5] By the chart's last issue on December 1, 1990,Billboard considered its composition of songs too similar to the Hot 100's and announced its discontinuation.[6] The Black/dance/pop crossover genre became known asrhythmic contemporary,[7] andBillboard launched theTop 40/Rhythm-Crossover chart on October 3, 1992.[11]
