Deal sheet
- Status
- Confirmed as a credit line published by the rightsholder on two digital services, not as a disclosed transaction. The licence wording appears on 18 releases dated 20 July 2023 to 30 May 2025 and on no release after that date, on the evidence checked. Whether the licence ended, was renewed under different credit wording, or simply stopped being reflected in delivered metadata could not be established: no release by either artist after 30 May 2025 carrying a Waka Music Limited credit was found in the scan, so the absence of the wording is not by itself evidence that the licence lapsed.
- Type
- Distribution, Licensing
- Parties
- Waka Music Limited, ONErpm
- Amount
- Not disclosed. No advance, royalty split, term length, minimum guarantee or reversion date appears in any source checked, and neither party has published anything about the arrangement.
- Rights covered
- Sound recording copyright (phonogram) in named master recordings, granted by Waka Music Limited to ONErpm on an exclusive basis. The credit line reads "under exclusive license to ONErpm", which on its face is a grant of exploitation rights for a term rather than an assignment: Waka Music Limited remains the named phonogram owner and ONErpm is the exclusive licensee. The credit does not say what the licence covers beyond that, and in practice a credit in this form on a digital service is a distribution licence. Publishing rights in the underlying compositions are a separate estate, are not addressed by a phonogram credit, and could not be established for any of the 18 recordings.
- Territory
- Not stated in the credit line. The credit was read on Apple Music's Ghana storefront and the releases are available internationally, which is consistent with ONErpm's global distribution footprint but does not evidence a contractual territory. No source checked states one.
- Announced
- 2023-07-20
- Primary document
- Rights registry
- Sources
- Apple Music release page for Wendy Shay, "Habibi" (Ghana storefront), fetched 17 September 2026, carrying the phonogram credit "(P) 2023 Waka Music Limited, under exclusive license to ONErpm". This is the earliest of the 18 releases found carrying the licence credit. · Apple Music release page for Fameye, "Three Times of Peter", fetched 17 September 2026: "(P) 2024 Waka Music Limited, under exclusive license to ONErpm". Establishes that the licence credit is not confined to one artist.
Read this before citing: THIS IS NOT A RECORD OF A DISCLOSED TRANSACTION. Neither Waka Music Limited nor ONErpm has announced this arrangement, and no contract, term sheet or financial detail is public. A phonogram credit is a claim made by the party delivering the recording to a digital service at the time of delivery. It is good evidence of who asserted what and when, and it is the industry's own public register of record, but it is not a filing and it is not proof of title. Separately: the corporate identity of Waka Music Limited remains unresolved (see company record). The relationship between Waka Music Limited, Wahoo Music and Bytetunes Music is NOT established as common ownership. What is established is that wahoo-music.com lists both ONErpm and WAKA Music among its partners.
Eighteen commercial releases by Wendy Shay and Fameye carry the sound recording copyright credit “Waka Music Limited, under exclusive license to ONErpm” on Apple Music. The earliest is Wendy Shay’s “Habibi”, released 20 July 2023. The most recent is “Too Late (2.0)”, released 30 May 2025. Thirteen are Wendy Shay releases and five are Fameye releases.
The credit states a licence, not a transfer. On its face Waka Music Limited holds the sound recording copyright and ONErpm holds an exclusive grant to exploit it. That is the only place in public where any rights structure involving Waka Music Limited is stated at all.
The wording is confined to these 18 releases. The other 235 releases carrying a Waka Music Limited credit, including Kuami Eugene’s “Renaissance: Echoes of the Rockstar” and Stonebwoy’s “Gidigba (Firm & Strong)”, read only “Waka Music Limited” with no licensee named. Deezer records the label on the same Wendy Shay and Fameye releases as “Waka Music Limited” and does not carry the licence wording at all.
No announcement of this arrangement was made by either party. Neither company’s website mentions it. It is observable only from the credit line.
