Wizkid’s Masters Belong to Starboy Entertainment Ltd. UK Companies House Dissolved the Company in June 2026.

Wizkid’s global catalogue carries a single line of ownership: “under exclusive license from Starboy Entertainment Ltd,” the company that has appeared on his releases since at least 2022 and that RCA Records, a Sony Music Entertainment label, has licensed to distribute worldwide since 2017. That company no longer legally exists. UK Companies House dissolved Starboy Entertainment Limited on 16 June 2026, struck off the register for failing to file, the second time this has happened to it in four years. No party has said what that means for the copyright it was named as holding.

The deal that was never in question

The distribution structure itself is well documented and not in dispute. On 1 March 2017, RCA Records and Sony Music International announced a multi-album worldwide deal with Wizkid, then the biggest global label signing an African solo artist had received. RCA’s chairman and CEO, Peter Edge, was quoted by name: “We are thrilled to welcome Wizkid to the RCA Records family. He has become a superstar in the African music scene and will be a game-changer in bringing African music to the world.” Wizkid marked the announcement with a new single, “Sweet Love,” released the same day.

From the outset, Nigerian trade coverage of the deal noted it was not a conventional major-label signing: Wizkid’s own company, Starboy Entertainment, retained the copyright in his recordings, with RCA and Sony Music International holding worldwide distribution rights under licence rather than acquiring the masters outright. Every album since has confirmed that structure in the one place that states it precisely: the phonogram credit on the release itself. His fifth album, More Love, Less Ego (November 2022), and sixth, Morayo (November 2024), both carry the line “℗ 2024 RCA Records, under exclusive license from Starboy Entertainment Ltd.” Sony Music’s own press release for Morayo describes the album as delivered “via Starboy/Sony Music International/RCA Records,” the same three-name structure, stated by Sony itself.

What Companies House actually shows

Starboy Entertainment Limited is a real, named UK company, not a generic imprint: company number 10075091, incorporated 21 March 2016, registered at 104 Oxford Street in London. Its founding director was Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, Wizkid’s legal name, who resigned on 8 August 2018. The sole director since that date is Jadine Jackie Pollock, a British national born October 1983, the legal name behind Jada Pollock, who UK trade title Music Week names directly as “Head of Starboy Entertainment and Wizkid’s manager.”

The company’s filing history over the past four years is a near-continuous cycle of compliance failure. Companies House struck it off once already, dissolving it on 27 December 2022 after a first strike-off notice in May that year went unresolved. It was brought back through an administrative restoration filed 2 June 2023, the mechanism that returns a struck-off company to the register, accompanied that same day by two years of backlogged accounts and a confirmation statement. Fresh strike-off notices followed in May 2024 and June 2025; both were discontinued after the company caught up on filings. A third notice, filed 3 March 2026, was suspended on 21 April, the same step that preceded discontinuation the two previous times. This time it did not hold. On 16 June 2026, Companies House published the Final Gazette notice: Starboy Entertainment Limited, dissolved via compulsory strike-off.

None of this is a matter of interpretation. It is read directly from the register: the overview page states company status “Dissolved,” dissolved on “16 June 2026”; the filing history lists each gazette notice, suspension, discontinuation and the final dissolution by date and document type; the officers page lists Pollock as the sole current director and Balogun as resigned. Companies House does not verify the accuracy of what companies file with it, but a strike-off and a dissolution are actions the registrar takes, not claims a company makes about itself.

What dissolution means for a company’s assets

UK company law is specific about what happens next. Under section 1012 of the Companies Act 2006, when a company is dissolved, “all property and rights whatsoever vested in or held on trust for the company immediately before its dissolution… are deemed to be bona vacantia” and belong to the Crown, subject to the company’s possible restoration to the register. Bona vacantia claims on intellectual property are handled by the Bona Vacantia Division of the Government Legal Department, which can sell such assets but offers no title guarantee and has no obligation to sell to any particular buyer, including a company’s own former directors.

That is the general rule, and this record states it as exactly that: a general rule, not a specific finding about Wizkid’s masters. Nothing checked in this investigation shows the Bona Vacantia Division taking any action, and nothing checked shows whether the copyright in Wizkid’s recordings was assigned, licensed onward, or otherwise dealt with before 16 June 2026 in a way that would put it beyond the reach of section 1012. Companies House restoration remains available: the same company was struck off and brought back once already, in 2023, and could be again. What can be said with confidence is narrower and still significant: as of this record’s publication, the entity named on Wizkid’s official global release credits as the owner of his masters is, by the UK’s own company register, dissolved.

The most recent credit, and the gap since

The last Wizkid release to carry a rights credit is Real, Vol. 1, a joint EP with Asake released 23 January 2026, five months before the dissolution. Its own phonogram line reads “℗ 2026 Starboy Entertainment Ltd. / GIRAN Republic / EMPIRE,” naming Asake’s label and EMPIRE Distribution alongside Starboy Entertainment Ltd. as rights holders, with EMPIRE, not RCA, credited as the release’s label. That is itself a change worth noting on its own terms: it is the first Wizkid project in this catalogue not distributed through RCA/Sony Music International since the 2017 deal began, though no source explains why, and this record does not speculate. No Wizkid solo release has followed the January EP as of this record’s publication, so there is no more recent phonogram credit to check against the dissolved company, and this record cannot say whether or how the credit line will read on whatever comes next.

What this means for artists

A rights-holding company is a piece of infrastructure, and infrastructure needs maintenance. Starboy Entertainment Limited is not an obscure shell: it is the named owner of a global superstar’s master recordings, credited as such on official Sony Music press releases and on the catalogue metadata of every major streaming service. Its four-year pattern of missed confirmation statements and accounts, serious enough to trigger three separate strike-off proceedings and complete two of them, shows that even an operation of that size and visibility is not immune to the basic administrative discipline a rights-holding entity requires: filing on time, every time, regardless of how the touring calendar or the album cycle is going.

The lesson generalises past this one artist. An artist-owned rights company is not a formality created once at signing and then forgotten. It is a live legal entity with ongoing statutory duties, and if those duties lapse, the company can cease to exist while the catalogue it was built to hold keeps generating revenue and keeps needing an owner of record. Anyone advising an artist on a licence-not-sale structure, the same structure this desk has now documented for CKay, Tyla and Wizkid, should treat the health of the holding company as part of the deal’s maintenance, not a detail to check once and forget.

Limits of this record. The 2017 signing announcement, including the direct Peter Edge quote, comes from BellaNaija’s republication of the Billboard-exclusive announcement, dated 1 March 2017. The Morayo release structure and label credit come from Sony Music Canada’s own press release for the album. Phonogram credits for Morayo and for Real, Vol. 1 were read directly from Apple Music’s album pages on 24 August 2026, not from a secondary summary. Starboy Entertainment Limited’s incorporation date, dissolution date, filing history and officer records were read directly from UK Companies House, company number 10075091, on 24 August 2026; Companies House does not verify the accuracy of information filed with it, though the strike-off and dissolution actions themselves are actions of the registrar. The identification of director Jadine Jackie Pollock with the publicly known Jada Pollock rests on matching name, date of birth window and role across the Companies House record and Music Week’s description of her as “Head of Starboy Entertainment and Wizkid’s manager”; no single document states both names together. The general legal consequence of dissolution under section 1012 of the Companies Act 2006 is quoted from the legislation itself and is stated here as general law, not as a specific finding about what has happened to Wizkid’s catalogue; this record checked for, and found, no public record of the Bona Vacantia Division taking any action regarding this company, and did not check whether the copyright was dealt with before dissolution. No party, Wizkid’s team, RCA Records or Sony Music, had published any statement addressing the dissolution as of this record’s publication.