Adult Alternative Airplay, also known as Triple A, is a record chart that ranks the most-played songs on American adult album alternative radio stations. Formulated based on each song's weekly total plays, the chart was introduced in the January 20, 1996 issue of Radio & Records magazine.[1][2] Adult Alternative Songs, along with other Radio & Records airplay charts, was initially compiled using radio airplay data from Mediabase.[3] In August 2006, Radio & Records was acquired by The Nielsen Company – then known as VNU Media – parent company of rival publication Billboard.[4] Following the purchase, Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems replaced Mediabase in monitoring airplay for charts, beginning with the issue dated August 11, 2006.[5][6] Billboard themselves introduced the chart in their July 5, 2008 issue, appropriating the same Nielsen data,[2] and became its sole publisher after Radio & Records ceased publication in June 2009.[7]
The Billboard website currently lists Adult Alternative Songs charts dating back to January 1996.[8] These charts are based on data from a Triple A chart that had previously been published in the Billboard-owned Airplay Monitor magazine from that date until the acquisition of Radio & Records, and which had used Nielsen data that was largely similar to the Mediabase data used in the Radio & Records chart.
On the Billboard Adult Alternative Songs decade-end chart, "Use Somebody" by American rock band Kings of Leon, which originally topped the chart for two weeks in 2009, ranked as the overall top single of the 2000s.[9] The decade-end top artist was English alternative rock band Coldplay,[9] who scored eight number-one adult alternative singles during the 2000s.[10]