Tropical Albums The Tropical Albums chart was established on the issue dated June 29, 1985. Initially, it was published on a fortnightly basis with its positions being compiled by sales data from
Latin retailers and distributors. The methodology for the chart was amended with the effect from the week of July 10, 1993, to have its sales compiled by
Nielsen SoundScan, basing it on electronic
point of sale data. At the same time, the chart began to be published weekly and became a sub chart of
Top Latin Albums (which was established in the same week as the methodology change).
Billboard also imposed a linguistic rule requiring an album to have 70% of its content in Spanish (later reduced to 50%) to be eligible to rank on the chart. On January 26, 2017,
Billboard updated the Tropical Albums, along with the other genre album charts, to incorporate track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA) to match the current
Billboard 200 methodology. The first number-one album on the Tropical Albums chart was
Innovations by
El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico.
Tropical Airplay The Tropical Airplay was established on October 8, 1994, as a subchart of the
Latin Airplay chart. It ranked the top-performing songs played on tropical radio stations in the US based on weekly
airplay data compiled by
Nielsen's
Broadcast Data Systems (BDS). With the issue dated January 21, 2017,
Billboard revamped the chart to reflect overall airplay of tropical music on Latin radio stations. Instead of ranking songs being played on tropical stations, rankings are determined by the amount of airplay tropical songs receive on stations that play Latin music regardless of genre. The first number-one song on the Tropical Airplay chart was "
Quien Eres Tu" by
Luis Enrique.
Hot Tropical Songs On the issue dated April 12, 2025,
Billboard established Hot Tropical Songs which ranks the best-performing tropical songs which follows the methodology of the
Billboard Hot 100 by incorporating
digital download sales, streaming data, and radio airplay of tropical songs over all formats. The first number-one song on the Hot Tropical Songs chart was "
Baile Inolvidable" by
Bad Bunny. ==References==