I've been following charts for quite some time now. But I have always been confused about Rhythmic radio. I'm looking at past CHR, Rhythmic and Urban charts (here you go: http://www.popradiotop20.com/Year/RR.htm) and I noticed there wasn't much difference between the music played at Rhythmic and CHR circa 2000-2005.

Also, Rhythmic was nearly identical to Urban for several years.

Excuse me for my chart ignorance, but what is the MAJOR difference between CHR and Rhythmic? What classifies as "rhythmic" these days and in say, 2000?

Alot of the pop music these days is R&B influnced, therefore, most songs crossover from the one to the other.

True R&B songs only crossover when they are big hits over Rhythmic and Urban and even so usually don't go too high on mainstream unless they are by high profile artist.

Oh OK. But what is "rhythmic?" I'm looking at the old radio charts and Urban and Rhythmic were nearly identical for awhile. Then Rhythmic and Pop became identical.

I'm short on my english, maybe someone else can explain it to you.

I can tell when a song is Urban and Rhythmic by sound but can't explain the difference with my english, hell, it's hard to even explain it in Hebrew .

IDK about back in 2000, but basically rhythmic these days is the same as CHR because of the dance trend in pop music. But rhythmic plays more urban music than CHR.

Rhythmic is essentially top 40 with more dance and hip hop influences.

Take a look at this chart:
http://www.popradiotop20.com/Year/RR-RHY-2000-Year.htm

Now take a look at this chart:
http://www.popradiotop20.com/Year/RR-URB-2000-Year.htm

Don't they look nearly identical?

In 2010...

CHR will play dance pop music and little bit of everything else.
Rhythmic will play more hardcore Hip Hop, Contemparary R&B (Beyonce, Chris Brown, Usher), Dance Pop (Rihanna, Ke$ha, Katy Perry) and Hip Pop (B.O.B.) all in heavy rotation.
Urban just plays strictly Hip Hop & R&B music.

Ok this bitch beat me to it.

CHR - Pop
Rhythmic - R&B
Urban - Hip-Hop

R&B is essentially a combo of pop and hip-hop, so that explains why it plays hits from both formats and why all three are related to each other.

Let's take a few songs to compare.

La Roux - Bulletproof
Huge pop hit, but flops on both rhythmic and urban. "Bulletproof" is just to pop for them.

Ke$ha - TiK ToK
Really big hit on pop and rhythmic. Fails on urban. The song is pop enough for pop, but also very r&b/dance influenced. Has little to no hip-hop influence.

Alicia Keys - Unthinkable
Huge urban hit and good rhythmic hit as well. Very r&b and hip-hop influenced. Pop flop. Almost no pop influence in the song at all.

Beyonce - Single Ladies
Has many pop, r&b, and hip-hop elements. A big hit on all three formats.

Really, if it's a hit on rhythmic, then 95% of the time, it's a hit on either urban or pop as well. Rhythmic basically is a mixture of the two. You know, more hip-hop than what pop usually goes for, but more pop than what urban usually goes for. It's a hard format to explain.