Avex USA Publishing and Coup D’Etat Music Signed Victony to a Publishing Joint Venture in 2023. The Entity That Signed Him No Longer Exists Under That Name.

In October 2023, a joint venture between Avex USA Publishing and Coup D’Etat Music signed Nigerian Afrobeats artist Victony to a global publishing deal, described by both companies only as “global” with no territory, term or figure attached. Eighteen months later, the company on Victony’s side of that contract stopped existing under the name that signed it. On 25 March 2025, Avex Inc. folded “all assets and staff previously under Avex USA” into a newly formed Avex Music Group, installing a different executive as chief executive. No source found in reporting through August 2026 states what happened to the Victony joint venture, or his publishing catalogue specifically, in that consolidation. His masters, meanwhile, sit with an entirely different company that nothing in this record connects to either Avex entity.

What was actually announced in 2023

The deal itself is well documented. Music Business Worldwide reported on 18 October 2023 that Avex USA Publishing had formed a joint venture with Coup D’Etat Music, a subsidiary of Los Angeles management and publishing company The Revels Group, to sign Victony. Two Nigerian outlets carried independent accounts of the same announcement within days, and all three quote the same three people. Matt Geffen, Coup D’Etat’s founder and chief executive, said the companies were “very excited to welcome Victony and our incredible partners at KVLT WRLD and The Plug Entertainment to the family.” Lou Al-chamaa, representing Avex USA, called Victony’s songwriting “unmatched.” Victony himself said he had “been particular about only working with teams who understand my journey and align with my vision.”

What none of the three quotes states, and what no source reviewed for this record discloses, is money. No consideration, advance, royalty split or equity share in the joint venture appears anywhere in the coverage. “Global deal” and “global publishing agreement” are the only descriptions of scope on record. That is common for publishing signings at this level, deal terms rarely surface in the trade press, but it means the transaction can be dated and its parties named with confidence while its actual economics remain unknown.

Publishing and masters are not the same deal

The same October 2023 coverage mentions, almost in passing, that Victony’s breakout single “Soweto,” which had by then generated more than 130 million streams, had already “landed him a record deal with Joie Manda’s Encore Recordings.” That is a separate company handling a separate right. Publishing covers the songwriting, the composition. Masters cover the specific recording. An artist can, and Victony does, have one company on each side of that line, with no ownership relationship between them stated in any source checked for this record.

MusicBrainz’s release data confirms the masters side is current. Encore Recordings is credited as the label on Victony’s debut album Stubborn, released 21 June 2024, and again on his EP Very Stubborn, released 21 November 2025, less than a year before this record was published. Whatever happened on the publishing side of his catalogue after 2025, his recordings have continued to appear under the same masters deal announced back in 2023.

The company that signed him no longer exists under that name

Avex USA Publishing was one division of Avex USA Inc., the Los Angeles operation Japan’s Avex Inc. launched in 2018 under president Naoki Osada, alongside a record label called SELENE and a venture-investment arm. On 25 March 2025, Music Business Worldwide reported that Avex Inc. had acquired the full S10 Music Publishing catalogue and an increased stake in S10 Management from Brandon Silverstein, and that “all assets and staff previously under Avex USA will now be consolidated under the Avex Music Group banner.” Silverstein was named chief executive of the combined entity. A separate MBW report from 15 July 2025, on Osada’s departure and his subsequent venture, refers to him only in the past tense as “former CEO of Avex USA.”

Neither article mentions Victony, Coup D’Etat Music, or the fate of Avex USA Publishing’s existing signed catalogue in the restructuring. Avex Music Group’s own site, checked directly for this record, describes a global operation of “40+ Labels” and “25+ Subsidiaries” with a publishing roster built around writers including Grant Boutin, Elkan and Kamal Wilson. Victony’s name does not appear on it. That absence is consistent with several different outcomes, the joint venture could have transferred quietly to the new entity, been renegotiated, or lapsed, and it proves none of them. A roster page not naming an artist is evidence of nothing on its own; this desk checked for it and is reporting what it found, which is silence, not a fact.

Coup D’Etat Music’s side of the arrangement shows no equivalent disruption. No source reviewed reports any change in its ownership, leadership or structure since 2023. Matt Geffen continues to be named as its chief executive in trade coverage of the company’s other signings, including a 2022 co-publishing joint venture with Ultra Music Publishing for Nigerian producer Tejiri Akpoghene, Coup D’Etat’s first signing outside acts already connected to The Revels Group.

Why this record does not claim to know where things stand today

A publishing joint venture is a private contract, not a public filing. There is no equivalent here of a UK Companies House record or an SEC filing that would settle, on a specific date, whether the Victony agreement is still in force. What can be stated with confidence is two separate, independently sourced facts: the joint venture was announced and confirmed by all three named parties in October 2023, and the Avex side of that joint venture underwent a confirmed corporate consolidation in March 2025 that changed its name, its ownership structure and its chief executive. This record documents both. It does not assert that the second caused the first to end, because no source says so either way.

That gap is itself the finding. Trade press covers signings with quotes and fanfare and rarely returns to check what happened to the company on the other side of the contract two years later. Corporate restructurings at a Japanese entertainment conglomerate’s US division get their own separate coverage, written without reference to the individual artist deals sitting inside the entity being restructured. The two stories run in parallel and never meet, which means an artist’s publishing status can become genuinely unclear to an outside observer without either party ever announcing anything.

What this means for artists

A joint venture publisher is not a fixed address. When a global major forms a JV with a boutique US publisher to sign you, you are not just signing with the boutique company, you are exposed to whatever happens at its larger partner, and majors restructure their US publishing arms more often than they announce it to any single artist’s fanbase. Ask, in the contract itself, what happens to your catalogue if either joint venture partner is acquired, merged or wound down, and get a name and a notice obligation in writing rather than a verbal assurance that “nothing changes.”

Separate your masters company from your publisher company, deliberately, the way Victony’s arrangement already does. Because Encore Recordings and the Avex/Coup D’Etat venture are unconnected entities on the evidence available, whatever uncertainty now surrounds the publishing side has no apparent bearing on the masters side, which continued producing credited releases into late 2025. That structural separation is protective by accident here; artists can make it protective on purpose.

Check the parent, not just the logo on the contract. Avex USA Publishing sounded, in 2023, like a stable division of a large, decades-old Japanese entertainment company. Eighteen months later it was gone as a name. A publisher’s own longevity in market is not guaranteed by its parent’s size, and an artist’s leverage to ask what a restructuring means for their specific deal is highest before signing, not after the press release announcing the change has already gone out without their name in it.

Limits of this record. The October 2023 signing is established from Music Business Worldwide’s original report plus two independent Nigerian trade accounts of the same announcement, all three quoting the same named executives. Coup D’Etat Music’s structure as a Revels Group subsidiary and Matt Geffen’s role are corroborated by separate Billboard coverage of an unrelated signing. The March and July 2025 Avex USA to Avex Music Group consolidation is sourced to two Music Business Worldwide reports, read directly, neither of which mentions Victony or this joint venture by name; the connection between that corporate change and Victony’s specific publishing status is not stated by any source and is not asserted here. Encore Recordings’ continued role as Victony’s masters label is confirmed from MusicBrainz release data for two releases, read directly on 28 August 2026, and is treated as a separate right from the publishing deal that is the subject of this record. No SEC or Companies House filing exists for Avex USA Publishing or Coup D’Etat Music as privately or foreign-held US operations; the ownership and structural claims above rest on the companies’ own published statements and consistent trade-press reporting, not a regulatory filing.