Billboard is changing its chart math again. Starting in mid-January, streams will count for more when calculating album sales. The main shift gives more chart influence to people using free, ad-supported streaming tiers.
The new formula reduces the number of streams needed to equal one album sale. For paid subscription streams, it drops from 1,250 to 1,000. The change for free ad-supported streams is even bigger, dropping from 3,750 streams to 2,500. This means free streams gain more relative power. Previously, one paid stream equaled three free ones. Now, a paid stream only counts as two and a half free streams. This will likely increase the total album equivalent sales reported across the board.
These updates apply to the Billboard...
Margo Price just inked a deal with Warner Chappell Music. The singer-songwriter signed a global publishing agreement with the company's Nashville branch. Her frequent creative partner Jeremy Ivey also got an administration deal there. Price's latest album, Hard Headed Woman, scored two Grammy nominations. One was for Best Traditional Country Album. The other was for a duet with Tyler Childers, who is also on their roster.
Price has been around for a minute. Her first record came out in 2016 and hit some Billboard charts. She put out a few more albums after that, all landing in the Americana and folk zones. She works with other artists too, like Willie Nelson and Chris Stapleton. She even produced a record for Jessi Colter recently...
Dude in Zimbabwe tried to fake his way into nursing school. Jonathan Mukwena, a twenty-year-old from Chiredzi, got slapped with a 350 dollar fine. He will go to jail for three months if he does not pay. A Bulawayo magistrate named Beverly Madzikatire hit him with the penalties for fraud and forgery. He tried using a fake O-Level certificate to get into the program at Mpilo Central Hospital.
The court heard he actually took his exams back in 2022 at Dzoro High School. His real grades were pretty mid. He got a B in two subjects, Shona and Geography. Everything else was a D, including math and English. He made a counterfeit version of that certificate anyway to apply for the competitive nursing spot.
He has until the start of 2026 to...
A Zimbabwean businesswoman and author has published a memoir about her life since divorcing five years ago. Theodora Madzinga-Chinembiri's book details her experience after a nineteen-year marriage ended. The 46-year-old mother of four says she wrote it to push society, especially religious communities, to talk openly about failed marriages instead of treating divorce as a taboo.
She describes practical shocks, like being removed from her ex-husband's medical aid, and the difficult financial downsizing that followed. The family stopped taking luxury holidays, and she switched to smaller cars. Madzinga-Chinembiri credits her own multiple income streams and her ex-husband's continued support with their children's expenses for getting...
Vodafone Oman just rolled out a new loyalty scheme called Wafi. It skips the usual points system to give customers instant rewards. The program works directly inside the existing My Vodafone app, offering deals from partner brands in categories like food and shopping.
A company exec said the idea is to blend rewards seamlessly into the normal customer experience, not create a separate process. The benefits are automatic for subscribers, with no spending minimums. They plan to expand the offers based on how people use it. This move is part of the telecom's bigger push to build a full digital ecosystem, aiming to keep its services aligned with everyday life.
Nigeria's push for digital control is focusing on keeping data inside the country. Recent outages on global platforms have shown the risks of relying on foreign servers, which can break financial systems and weaken security. Storing data abroad leaves institutions exposed to outside policies, service breaks, and security holes.
The government's answer is its own infrastructure provider, Galaxy Backbone. They run high-grade data centers locally, offering a sovereign cloud for agencies, banks, and businesses. This setup promises better speed, stronger compliance with Nigerian laws, and less downtime from international disruptions. The push is for both public and private sectors to host their critical operations within these domestic...
Airtel Money users in Kenya can now pay for Showmax subscriptions directly through their mobile wallets. The partnership lets customers sign up for or renew any of the streaming service's plans, including its entertainment and Premier League packages, using their phone balance.
The move makes it easier to pay for shows and sports, especially during the holiday period when viewership typically spikes. To use it, people just pick Airtel Money as the payment option on the Showmax site and confirm the transaction with their number and PIN.
Chad is hosting a regional meeting focused on internet backbone mapping and digital money services. The four-day workshop, organized by the local telecom regulator ARCEP Chad alongside a Central African regulatory body and a UN agency, brings together officials and operators from multiple neighboring countries. The opening remarks from Chad's digital minister stressed that no single nation can tackle connectivity and cybersecurity problems alone, pushing for stronger regional collaboration.
The head of ARCEP Chad linked the event to national goals for modernizing government and fostering inclusive growth. He described fiber-optic networks as a critical foundation for economic competition and integration, with precise mapping needed to...
A Zambian government tech unit is starting a program to spread digital skills training across different ministries. Their institute brought in thirteen officials from departments like defense, justice, and finance for an orientation. The goal is to make these officers instructors who can manage course sign-ups on a specific online learning platform within their own agencies.
This decentralized approach is meant to boost participation and let each ministry handle its own basic training administration. It fits within the larger plan to modernize public services by improving digital literacy. The program uses existing partnerships with global tech education providers to build up skills in areas like cybersecurity and general platform use...
