A chart is only worth reading if you can check how it was made. This page is the full compilation method for VersaBoard, published so that any artist, manager, journalist or reader can work out for themselves whether a position is fair.
Where the method has a limitation, it is stated here rather than left for someone to discover.
VersaBoard is in beta
The chart is published while it is still being built, and it is labelled beta so that nobody has to guess how finished it is.
The measurement is the reliable part. View counts are read directly from YouTube, the arithmetic is a subtraction, and the raw readings behind every published week are kept so the result can be recomputed by anyone who wants to check it.
The weak part is names. Artists title their uploads however they like. Some lead with the artist, some lead with the song, some use neither order and some bury both under promotional text. Many songs are released on a label or distributor channel rather than the artist's own. There is no reliable way to read an artist and a song title out of that automatically, so entries are checked by a person before a chart publishes, and while the catalogue is being built some will still reach the page wrong.
What that means in practice: a position is trustworthy, a name may not be yet. If a track is credited to the wrong artist, spelled wrong, or attributed to a channel rather than the person who made it, that is a mistake and we want to hear about it.
Corrections go to versacorp@versaedits.com. They are handled the way every other correction on this page is handled: fixed, dated, and described in the open.
VersaBoard ranks the top 20 tracks by weekly view change on YouTube. Weekly view change means the difference between a video's total view count at the close of one observation window and its total at the close of the previous one. It is a measure of movement in the last seven days, not of lifetime popularity.
Only the official upload of a track is counted. That means the video posted by the artist, their label, or their distributor. Where an artist has both a topic channel auto-generated by YouTube and a channel they actually run, the channel they run is the one counted.
A track is counted once. Where the same recording exists as an official music video and an official audio upload from the same rights holder, the two are added together and treated as one entry. Where they belong to different rights holders, only the one the artist points to is counted.
A remix is folded into the original and the two chart as one entry. Where a remix changes the structure, the lyrics and the melody, it is a different record and charts separately. A guest verse added to an existing song is not a different record. A version with a new arrangement, new writing and a new melody is.
YouTube is the only source. Streaming numbers from other platforms are not counted, not estimated, and not blended in. This is a limitation and we would rather state it plainly than pretend to a completeness we cannot verify. Zambia has no neutral streaming data provider, and a chart that quietly guesses at Spotify or Audiomack figures would be exactly the kind of unverifiable claim this publication exists to avoid.
A track qualifies if the lead or a co-lead credited artist is Zambian. Zambian means holding Zambian nationality or having built their career primarily in Zambia. Artists in the diaspora qualify.
A featured artist alone does not qualify a track. A Zambian verse on a Nigerian lead artist's single does not put that single on VersaBoard. A Zambian lead artist featuring a foreign guest does.
Producers do not qualify a track on their own, but a Zambian producer credited as a lead artist on their own release does.
Language is not a criterion. Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga, Lozi, English and any other language are treated identically. Genre is not a criterion either. Kopala rap, Zed beats, gospel, amapiano, afro-pop, rock and everything else compete on the same chart.
Nationality calls are recorded in The Record, our public archive, so a decision about whether an artist qualifies is checkable rather than a matter of our word.
The window is always seven days, running Friday 00:00 through Thursday 23:59 UTC. Both ends are measured and the difference between them is the chart.
The week starts on a Friday because that is when music is released. Global New Music Friday is the industry release day, so a record that drops on a Friday gets a full seven days in its first chart week rather than landing halfway through one. The major charts run this window for the same reason.
The chart publishes on the Saturday after the window closes. That gap exists because YouTube view counts continue to settle for a period after they are first displayed, and publishing into that settling period produces numbers that quietly change underneath a chart that claims to be final.
We would rather publish the window we actually measured than describe a tidier one we did not. A chart that states seven days and runs five is wrong even if every number in it is right.
One exception, stated because hiding it would be worse than having it. The first chart was measured before this window was settled, and ran Tuesday 4 August to Tuesday 11 August 2026. It is seven days and every number in it is real, but it is not a Friday week. The standard Friday window begins on 14 August 2026, which leaves 11 to 14 August uncharted. That gap is the one-off cost of moving to the right cadence, and we would rather pay it once in the open than quietly stretch a week to cover it.
Week numbers are ISO week numbers, so week 30 always means the same seven days no matter what day we publish.
View counts are read at the close of the window on Thursday. Readings are taken as close together as practically possible so that no track gets a longer count than another.
Each week gets a permanent URL of the form /versaboard/2026/32. That page keeps showing what the chart said in that week, for good.
Fan uploads, reuploads and reaction videos are excluded. They are not the artist's numbers and counting them would reward whoever has the most active reuploaders rather than the biggest week.
Lyric videos posted by third parties are excluded. Official lyric videos from the rights holder are counted.
Live performance footage, interviews, snippets, behind the scenes clips and DJ mixes are excluded. The chart measures released tracks, not coverage of an artist.
Compilations, playlists and full album uploads are excluded, because there is no way to attribute their views to a single track honestly.
Every published chart is checked against engagement before it goes out. Inflated view counts do not bring likes and comments with them, so a track whose views have moved far out of proportion to its engagement is held back for the week and looked at by a person. Where we make that call, we record it on the chart rather than letting a track disappear without explanation.
Correction, 11 August 2026. Until today this page described the check above as though it were already running. It was not. The sentence was written when the method was designed, and the check had not been built by the time week 32 published. We ran it by hand on week 32 after publication. Every entry in the top 20 cleared, and number one carried roughly 2.3 times the chart’s median like rate and 2.5 times its median comment rate, which is the opposite of what inflated views look like. The reading needed to run it automatically is now captured with every snapshot. We are recording this rather than quietly changing the sentence, because a page about how to check us is the last page that should be corrected in silence.
Nothing is excluded because of who the artist is, who they are signed to, what they have said about us, or whether they advertise with us. Chart placement is not for sale and never has been.
A song leaves when it has had its run. Without a rule for that, a track with steady long-term viewing could hold a position for years and the chart would stop being a record of the week and become a list of the same songs.
A song moves to recurrent, meaning it stops charting, when it has spent 20 weeks or more on the chart and falls below number 10. It also moves to recurrent when it has spent 52 weeks or more and falls below number 5.
Those thresholds are set against a top 20. The larger charts use looser ones, but a rule written for a hundred positions does nothing on twenty, and a rule that can never trigger is not a rule.
A song still gaining below those marks can stay, and that is a judgement call. Where we make one we record it, because an unexplained exception is indistinguishable from a favour.
A song that simply falls out of the top 20 for a week or two has not gone recurrent. When it returns, it keeps its history: weeks on chart count its whole chart life, and its peak is the best position it has ever reached, not the best of its current run. A record that once reached number two still has a peak of two when it comes back in at fifteen. It re-enters without a movement arrow, because there was no previous week to move from.
A song that has gone recurrent can still return. If it moves enough to re-enter on its own numbers it charts again, and we record that we allowed it. Songs come back, and a chart that cannot show that is not describing what happened.
Where two tracks have the same weekly view change, the tie breaks in this order.
First, the track with the higher total view count for the week takes the higher position. Second, if still level, the track that is climbing takes the higher position over one that is falling. Third, if still level, the track with fewer weeks on the chart takes the higher position, because the newer record is doing more with less time. Fourth, if still level, the track with the better peak position takes it.
Exact ties surviving all four are recorded as a shared position and the next position is skipped, the same way a standard chart handles it.
If the chart is wrong, we fix it and we say so. A corrected week keeps its URL, gains a dated correction note, and the change is described in plain terms: what was wrong, what it is now, and what caused it.
We do not quietly re-import a week and hope nobody kept a screenshot. Silently editing the record is the failure mode that costs a publication the only thing it cannot buy back.
To report an error, write to versacorp@versaedits.com with the week, the track and what you believe the correct figure is. Corrections that change a position are actioned within the week.
VersaBoard is compiled by VersaCorp Media and is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sanctioned by, or produced in partnership with any record label, distributor, streaming platform, radio station, collecting society, promoter, or awards body.
It is not an official chart and it is not a national chart. No authority has granted VersaCorp the right to speak for Zambian music, and we do not claim one. VersaBoard is a VersaCorp Media product with a published method, which is a narrower claim and a stronger one, because anybody can check it.
VersaBoard is not the only measure of Zambian music and we would not want it to be. Audiomack, Shazam and Boomplay all publish Zambian rankings, and each is a real signal worth reading. What separates them from this one is that each reports its own platform. VersaBoard is independent of the services it measures, which is the whole reason a chart needs to exist alongside them rather than instead of them.
Where another chart says something different from ours, that is information rather than a dispute, and we will report theirs alongside ours rather than pretend it does not exist. A measure that only ever confirms itself is not a measure.
View counts are taken from publicly available YouTube data. Figures are accurate as at the close of the observation window stated on each chart. YouTube view counts continue to move after that moment, so a number checked later will not match the published figure, and that is expected rather than an error.
No artist, label, or brand can buy a position, buy a removal, or see the chart before it publishes. Nobody outside the newsroom sees it early.
The chart is free to read, free to cite, and free to reproduce with attribution. It exists because Zambian music has never had a neutral, checkable measure of what a week actually looked like.
Questions about the method, or a correction to report? Write to versacorp@versaedits.com. The principles behind this document are at The Record.