UnitedMasters and Sarz’s 1789: a distribution licence, not a stake in the company

In June 2023, UnitedMasters agreed to distribute music from 1789, the artist-development imprint run by Nigerian producer Sarz. Two years later, the phonogram credit on Sarz’s own releases still reads the same way it did at the start: 1789 owns the recordings, and UnitedMasters holds an exclusive licence to distribute them. Nothing in the public record shows a sale of masters, an equity stake, or a disclosed fee. What changed hands was the right to distribute, not ownership.

What the announcement covers

Regional entertainment sites placed the announcement between 13 and 15 June 2023, framing it as a partnership between UnitedMasters and Sarz’s 1789 imprint covering artist discovery, catalogue licensing and services across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and South Africa. UnitedMasters founder Steve Stoute described Sarz as having “a remarkable ear for talent” and “a strong commitment to the artist development process.” Sarz spoke about wanting to give the artists he discovers through the Sarz Academy, his talent programme, a direct route to global distribution without giving up ownership along the way.

A UnitedMasters newsroom feature, live as of this writing, revisits the arrangement and confirms it began in 2023, though the feature itself is dated March 2024 and reads as a later profile rather than the original release. No announcement found, from either side, names a fee, an advance, a royalty rate, an equity stake or a valuation. Two years on, none has surfaced elsewhere either.

Who actually owns 1789

The imprint’s ownership is a matter of public record, not press-release language. UK Companies House lists 1789 Entertainment Ltd, company number 13200014, as incorporated on 15 February 2021, more than two years before the UnitedMasters agreement. The company’s persons-with-significant-control register names exactly one person: Sarz, born Osaretin Osabuohien, with “ownership of shares – 75% or more,” notified the same day the company was formed. No fund, distributor or major label appears anywhere on that register. Grace Ladoja is listed as a director, appointed in a filing dated 2 February 2026, after an earlier stint in the same role that ran from incorporation to that date.

That timeline matters for how the deal should be read. UnitedMasters was not brought in to launch 1789 or to co-found it. It was brought in more than two years after Sarz had already registered and controlled the company, to distribute what 1789 already owned. That is a licensing relationship layered onto an existing, wholly Sarz-owned business, not a joint venture that created a new one.

What the credit lines show

The clearest evidence of what the deal actually covers sits on the releases themselves. A Sarz Academy compilation released 19 July 2023, one month after the announcement, carries the phonogram credit “(P) 2023 1789 under exclusive license to UnitedMasters LLC.” A Sarz album released 26 September 2025, more than two years later, carries the identical structure: “(P) 2025 1789 under exclusive license to UnitedMasters LLC.” Streaming services checked independently of each other, including Beatport, Audiomack and Shazam, report the same credit line.

That wording is doing real work. “Under exclusive license to” is standard language for a distribution deal in which the licensor keeps ownership and grants a distributor the right to exploit the recording for a defined scope, rather than language that would suggest a transfer of the copyright itself. Two years of consistent credit lines, spanning multiple releases, indicate the structure has held rather than shifted since the announcement.

What could not be established

Not every thread here resolves cleanly. A reference site’s page on the 2023 Sarz Academy compilation claims the release came out “in partnership with Warner Music Africa,” alongside 1789 and UnitedMasters. The phonogram credit pulled directly from the release itself names no Warner entity at all, only 1789 and UnitedMasters. The reference page could not be checked directly for this record, so the Warner claim is recorded here as an unresolved discrepancy between what one secondary source says and what the release’s own credit line shows. It is not treated as either true or false.

A label-database search for “1789” turns up three separate entities: an unrelated French electronic label registered in 2013, a bare entry under the same name with no descriptive detail, and an unconnected catalogue-code match belonging to a different company altogether. None of them can be tied to Sarz’s imprint with confidence, so the identification in this record rests on the UK company filing and the DSP credit lines, not on that database.

This record also does not claim the UnitedMasters agreement has lapsed or was renegotiated at any point since 2023. Distribution deals do not typically show up in a public filing when their terms change, and none was found here describing an update. What can be said is narrower: the credit line that was true in July 2023 was still true in September 2025.

What this means for artists

The distinction between a distributor holding a licence and a distributor holding your masters is the difference between renting out a shop and selling the building. Under this structure, if UnitedMasters and 1789 ever part ways, the catalogue does not go anywhere: it stays with 1789, and by extension with Sarz, because the credit line names 1789 as the rights holder throughout. An artist signed to the Sarz Academy through 1789 is one contractual layer removed from Sarz, not two layers removed from the eventual owner of their recordings.

That is a materially different position from an artist whose masters sit with a distributor or major label under a deal where the distributor is also the named rights holder on the copyright line, as this desk has found to be the case for artists distributed through some other African-facing arrangements. It is also a reminder that “partnership” language in a press release tells you almost nothing about who owns what. The press release for this deal named no rights at all. The company filing and the copyright credit did the work of establishing that 1789, not UnitedMasters, is the rights holder here.

For artists weighing a deal with any imprint that is itself distributed by a larger platform, the lesson from this record is to ask the same two questions this desk asked: who is named on the persons-with-significant-control register of the company you would be signing to, and what does the copyright line actually say once music starts coming out. Both are public, checkable, and in this case, more informative than anything either party said at the time of the announcement.