CKay’s Masters Now Sit With His Own Company. AWAL Holds an Exclusive Licence, Not the Copyright.

CKay’s master recordings changed hands twice in five years, and both moves are dated precisely by the copyright line on his own releases. From 2020 to April 2025 his recordings carried the credit “Warner Music South Africa” or “Warner Music Africa.” Every release from 13 June 2025 onward carries a different line: “CKay Holdings LLC, under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings.” Warner did not sell a catalogue and AWAL did not buy one. CKay’s own company now owns the copyright, and AWAL, a Sony Music Entertainment division, holds a licence to exploit it. Neither party has disclosed a figure, a royalty rate or a contract term.

What actually changed hands, in order

The sequence is unusually well documented for a Nigerian artist’s catalogue, because Apple’s own catalogue metadata records the rights holder on every single release, and CKay’s discography spans exactly the period this desk needed to check.

From 2016 his early releases, including the EP that contained the original “Love Nwantiti,” carry the credit Chocolate City, the Lagos label. Starting in August 2020, as that song went global, some releases carry a more specific line: Chocolate City, under exclusive license to Warner Music South Africa (Pty) Ltd. That is the same structure this desk has already documented elsewhere for Tyla and FAX Records, a smaller label retaining ownership while a Warner or Sony operating company holds the exploitation rights.

By late 2020 the credit simplifies. Releases from “Felony” (November 2020) onward carry only “Warner Music South Africa,” with no Chocolate City name attached, and that pattern holds through his 2024 album Emotions, credited to “Warner Music Africa.” Chocolate City drops out of the picture entirely on the phonogram line, whatever the underlying agreement between the two companies remained. Warner Music Group has never disclosed the Chocolate City relationship’s structure in detail; this site’s own directory entry for Chocolate City Group records a convertible loan from Warner’s subsidiary WEA International, confirmed by a London court ruling, not an outright acquisition.

CKay’s recording deal with Warner Music South Africa ended in April 2025. He confirmed it himself in a quote to Nigerian press, calling the decision “intentional and mutual” and saying “it’s time for me to explore new energy and horizons.” No financial terms of the exit were disclosed, and no source states what happened to the master recordings from his Warner years, which are not covered by this record.

Six weeks later, a press release announced a new deal with AWAL, quoting CKay directly: “This is not just a new project. It is the beginning of something far deeper,” and, separately, “Every phase of my journey has shaped me and now it is time to own the moment.” Two AWAL executives were named and quoted in the same release: Excel Joab, in A&R and artist development for the company’s West Africa operation, and Ben Akinbola, its head of growth. The EP that followed, CKay The Second, released 13 June 2025, carries the new phonogram line. So do the singles that have followed it since, into 2026.

Owns, licenses, distributes: three different words

Nigerian and international coverage of the AWAL announcement mostly called it a “deal” or a “partnership” without saying what kind. That is the gap this desk exists to close, and here the copyright credit answers it precisely. “CKay Holdings LLC, under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings” states two facts in one line: CKay Holdings LLC is the owner, and AWAL holds an exclusive licence, meaning the right to exploit the recordings for a defined arrangement, not a transfer of the underlying copyright.

That detail matters because AWAL’s business is frequently described in shorthand as “distribution,” and distribution is a narrower thing again: pure pipework to get a file onto a streaming service, with no rights position at all. An exclusive licence is a real rights interest, closer to what a traditional label holds, but it is still not ownership. AWAL’s own published description of its standard terms is consistent with the credit: it states that artists on its deals “always own 100% of your masters” and that the company takes “a percentage of revenue that depends on the deal.” That is a general statement of AWAL’s policy across its roster, not a disclosed figure for CKay’s specific contract, which this desk has not seen and which neither party has published.

AWAL itself is not independent. Sony Music Entertainment agreed in February 2021 to acquire AWAL and Kobalt Neighbouring Rights from Kobalt Music Group for 430 million US dollars, a deal that closed in May 2021 and that Sony’s own regulatory filing confirms in those terms. AWAL now operates as a standalone division inside Sony’s independent artist and label services arm, alongside The Orchard. So the practical effect of CKay’s move is this: he left a Warner operating company that owned his masters outright, and signed with a Sony-owned company that, on the evidence of his own releases, does not.

The company behind the credit

CKay Holdings LLC is not a name that appeared in any of the announcement coverage. It surfaces only on the releases themselves. The closest public account of the underlying operation is Boyfriend Music Ltd, a management and publishing company CKay launched in Lagos in August 2024, ten months before the AWAL deal, with his manager Joseph Salubi as managing director and a US subsidiary set up to extend the business internationally. At launch, CKay described the company’s purpose in terms that read, in hindsight, like a statement of intent for what followed: “Every true artist deserves a team that supports their vision without taking advantage of them.”

No source explicitly states that CKay Holdings LLC is Boyfriend Music’s US rights-holding vehicle rather than an unrelated company that happens to share a founder. The sequence makes a coincidental reading implausible: Boyfriend Music launched first, describing itself as built to help artists “receive the royalties they deserve,” CKay Holdings LLC begins appearing on releases only once his Warner deal had ended, and no third entity is credited in between. This record treats them as the same operation while flagging that no single document names both entities together.

What this means for artists

Read the phonogram credit, not the press release. A press release can call an arrangement a “partnership” or a “deal” and leave the legal structure to guesswork; the ℗ line is a public, standing statement of exactly who owns a recording and who is licensed to exploit it, and it updates every time a new one is filed.

An exclusive licence to a distributor-turned-major-subsidiary is not the same thing as signing to that company as a label, and it is a materially stronger position than assigning your masters away. If a services company tells you that you keep your masters, ask to see that stated as a specific clause in your specific contract, not as a general claim on the company’s website. CKay’s own catalogue shows the two can align, but general marketing language and a signed term sheet are not the same document.

Build the rights-holding company before you need it. Boyfriend Music existed for the better part of a year before it had anything to hold; by the time CKay’s major deal ended, the vehicle to own what came next was already incorporated, staffed and named. An artist negotiating an exit without that structure in place is negotiating from a weaker position.

Limits of this record. The ownership sequence is established through Apple’s catalogue metadata for CKay’s discography, read directly and in full rather than through a secondary summary. The AWAL announcement and CKay’s quotes come from a press release carried in full on a UK music-industry press-release wire. His statement on the Warner exit is quoted from Nigerian trade coverage of 18 April 2025. The Boyfriend Music launch details and quotes come from a Nigerian entertainment outlet’s report of the August 2024 launch event. AWAL’s ownership by Sony Music Entertainment and the 430 million dollar purchase price come from Sony Corporation’s own regulatory filing, not from secondary reporting. AWAL’s stated rights-retention policy comes from its own website. No source discloses the financial terms of either the Warner exit or the AWAL agreement, and no filing naming both Boyfriend Music Ltd and CKay Holdings LLC as the same legal structure was located; that connection is inferred from timing and is flagged as such above.