BNXN’s Phonogram Credit Has Read ‘T.Y.E. / EMPIRE’ Since October 2021. Neither Label Has Ever Described What the Arrangement Is.

BNXN’s phonogram credit has changed twice in five years, and the second change has never broken. Every release from his 2020 debut singles through two 2021 tracks carries the notice ℗ Spaceship Entertainment Ltd. or, briefly, ℗ To Your Ears Entertainment alone. From Sorry I’m Late, out 27/28 October 2021, every release carries a joint credit, ℗ T.Y.E. / EMPIRE, a line that has now held for at least ten releases and five years, most recently on a 2026 single. Nobody has ever said what that credit means. There is no press release, no social media announcement, no executive quote from either side naming the arrangement, and nothing resembling the on-the-record account Olamide gave of his own EMPIRE joint venture with YBNL Nation. What exists is a catalogue record and a silence.

What the catalogue shows, release by release

Apple Music’s catalogue metadata and Deezer’s label field agree independently on where each line falls. Lenu (Remix), released 16 April 2020, and So Lovely, released 2 December 2020, both carry the notice ℗ Spaceship Entertainment Ltd. alone, the label associated with Spaceship Entertainment, Burna Boy’s own imprint. BNXN, then performing as Buju, had by his own later account left that label roughly a year before his next release.

Outside, released 19 May 2021, and Testimony, released 14 July 2021, are the two releases that sit in between. Both carry the notice ℗ To Your Ears Entertainment alone, with no second name anywhere in the credit, on both Apple’s and Deezer’s independent metadata. This is the only period in the catalogue where To Your Ears Entertainment appears by itself.

Sorry I’m Late, released 27/28 October 2021, is the first release to add a second name. Apple’s catalogue reads ℗ 2021 T.Y.E. / EMPIRE. Deezer’s label field for the same release reads T.Y.E. / EMPIRE, barcode 194690602719. Every release since carries the same two-name credit: Bad Since ’97 (25 August 2022, barcode 194690859014), Sincerely, Benson (4/5 October 2023, barcode 197342321792), CAPTAIN (2/3 July 2025, barcode 199316032659), and into 2026 with The Game Needs Us and Back Outside, both of which add a third name, 1789, ahead of T.Y.E. and EMPIRE. The RnB EP, released 18 April 2024, carries its own three-way variant, Blown Boy Ent. / T.Y.E / EMPIRE, tying in a third label, Blownboy Entertainment, for that project only. Across every release checked under his BNXN and Buju credits, the T.Y.E./EMPIRE pairing does not break once after October 2021, and it never appears before it.

A MusicBrainz release record for Bad Since ’97 corroborates the pairing independently of either storefront, listing EMPIRE with the role type Distributor and T.Y.E. as the second label on the same release, with a barcode matching the Deezer and Apple records exactly.

A credit line that looks like a known deal, but isn’t confirmed as one

The two-name format on BNXN’s catalogue reads exactly like the credit EMPIRE carries on Fireboy DML’s releases under Olamide’s YBNL Nation, a relationship both sides have called a joint venture on the record. Olamide announced that deal publicly in February 2020 and later described its structure himself: two entities coming together as one, not EMPIRE owning YBNL. That is the shape of evidence this record could not find for BNXN. No statement from To Your Ears Entertainment, from BNXN himself, from EMPIRE or from a named EMPIRE executive describes the T.Y.E./EMPIRE arrangement, gives it a name, or confirms when it began beyond what the catalogue itself shows. A Nigerian entertainment outlet’s report on the day Sorry I’m Late came out recorded the new credit and the fact that BNXN had recently left Spaceship, but did not attribute the new pairing to any deal, announcement or statement from either party.

EMPIRE opened a dedicated Africa division in February 2022, four months after the T.Y.E./EMPIRE credit first appeared on BNXN’s catalogue. That sequencing is reported here as a fact about timing, not as evidence of what the Africa division did or did not do with respect to BNXN specifically; no document connects the two.

What isn’t documented

No source checked for this record discloses an advance, a distribution fee, a royalty split or an equity stake tied to the T.Y.E./EMPIRE credit. Unlike the YBNL Nation arrangement, no party has used the words joint venture, distribution deal or licence to describe it, in any document this desk located. A search of SEC EDGAR’s company and full-text indexes for EMPIRE Distribution, BNXN and To Your Ears Entertainment returned no filings; EMPIRE is privately held and not a US securities registrant, so the absence of a filing is expected and does not, by itself, mean anything about the terms of this specific relationship.

No independent website, social media account or Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission record for To Your Ears Entertainment was located. CAC has no public search interface, so a registry check that would show the label’s directors, incorporation date or shareholding could not be run. Everything this record can say about To Your Ears Entertainment as a company comes from the phonogram credit itself and the pattern it forms across BNXN’s catalogue, not from a corporate filing.

It is also not established what changed operationally when EMPIRE’s name joined the credit. The two 2021 releases credited to To Your Ears Entertainment alone show the label was already functioning as a stand-alone rights holder before EMPIRE appears, which rules out EMPIRE being BNXN’s first label after Spaceship. What EMPIRE’s addition to the credit represents, whether that is a distribution deal, a marketing and services arrangement, a joint venture on the YBNL model, or something else entirely, is precisely the question no source obtained answers.

Signed to a label, credited with a distributor

The distinction that matters here is the one house style insists on: owning, administering, distributing and licensing are not interchangeable, and a shared credit line does not by itself tell a reader which of those EMPIRE is doing. BNXN’s masters carry To Your Ears Entertainment’s name on every release since he left Spaceship, including the two 2021 releases where EMPIRE is entirely absent from the credit. That is consistent with To Your Ears Entertainment being his label throughout, with EMPIRE added afterward in some capacity, most plausibly distribution given EMPIRE’s own business and the Distributor role type MusicBrainz assigns it on this exact release. It is not consistent with EMPIRE having signed BNXN directly, since his label’s own name never disappears from the credit at any point. But “most plausibly” is an inference from the pattern, not a documented fact, and this record does not upgrade it into one.

What this means for artists

A credit line is a genuinely useful, checkable signal. Ten releases and five years of an unbroken T.Y.E./EMPIRE pairing is a real pattern, and it is far more reliable than a one-off press mention, because a phonogram credit has to be accurate for legal reasons in a way a headline does not. But this record shows exactly where that signal stops being enough. The line tells a reader that two names sit on the copyright notice together. It does not tell a reader who owns the masters, who takes what share of receipts, how long the arrangement runs, or whether either side could walk away from it tomorrow. An artist or manager looking at a deal that will produce a credit like this one should ask, specifically and in writing, whether the incoming partner takes any ownership interest in the masters or purely a distribution fee and a share of net receipts, what happens to the credit and the masters if the deal ends, and whether the arrangement has a term at all. Those are different deals that can look identical on a tracklist. In BNXN’s case, five years after the credit changed, the answers to all of those questions remain outside any document this desk could locate.

Limits of this record: the phonogram-credit and catalogue-metadata evidence for the October 2021 change is independently confirmed across Apple Music’s and Deezer’s catalogue databases and a MusicBrainz release record, and is not in dispute. What is not established: any equity split, distribution fee, advance or royalty rate between To Your Ears Entertainment and EMPIRE; whether the arrangement is a joint venture, a distribution agreement or a licence; the exact date the arrangement began beyond the 27/28 October 2021 release date of the first joint-credited single; and any Nigerian corporate registry detail for To Your Ears Entertainment, since CAC has no public search interface. Neither To Your Ears Entertainment, EMPIRE nor BNXN was reached directly for comment before publication.