Deal sheet
- Status
- Confirmed
- Type
- 71
- Parties
- Virgin Music Group, Banks Music
- Amount
- Not disclosed
- Rights covered
- WHAT IS ESTABLISHED: Virgin Music Group's own newsroom named Reekado Banks as one of the initial partners at the September 2023 launch of its Lagos, Nigeria office, alongside the label Dvpper and a Darkoo single featuring Ayra Starr. Separately, the Apple Music album page for Feel Different (feat. Adekunle Gold and Maleek Berry), released 7 June 2023, carries the phonogram credit '(P) 2023 Banks Music, Under Exclusive License to Virgin Music Nigeria.' That credit shows Banks Music, Reekado Banks' own imprint, as the rights owner and Virgin Music Nigeria as an exclusive licensee/distributor for that release, not as a co-owner or acquirer of the masters. \n\nWHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: No source states a term length, a share of revenue, an advance, or a territory scope for the Virgin arrangement. No source states how many releases the Virgin license covered or when it ended. No party ever announced that the arrangement changed or ended. \n\nWHAT CHANGED AFTER: Subsequent Reekado Banks releases carry different credits entirely. Visa (14 June 2024) reads '(P) 2024 Otherside Media Limited / MAD Solutions LLC,' with no mention of Virgin or Banks Music in the credit. The album The Game Needs You (July 2025) reads '(P) 2025 Reekadia Limited/Ziiki media' on both Apple Music and Deezer. The EP Worthy Challenger (July 2026) reads '(P) 2026 Ziiki Media' on Apple Music, and MusicBrainz independently returns 'Ziiki Media' as the label for the same EP. Whether Banks Music, Otherside Media Limited and Reekadia Limited are the same legal entity trading under different names, or genuinely separate companies, could not be established from any source reviewed. Nigeria's Corporate Affairs Commission has no public search interface that could be queried in this session.
- Territory
- Nigeria (Virgin Music Nigeria office); worldwide digital distribution for the release itself
- Announced
- 2023-09-01
- Primary document
- Official newsroom
- Sources
- Virgin Music Group newsroom, 1 September 2023 · Apple Music album page, Feel Different (feat. Adekunle Gold and Maleek Berry), HTTP 200, fetched this session. Credit line: (P) 2023 Banks Music, Under Exclusive License to Virgin Music Nigeria. · Apple Music album page, Visa, HTTP 200, fetched this session. Credit line: (P) 2024 Otherside Media Limited / MAD Solutions LLC. · Apple Music album page, The Game Needs You, HTTP 200, fetched this session. Credit line: (P) 2025 Reekadia Limited/Ziiki media. · Deezer album page, The Game Needs You, HTTP 200, fetched this session, release date 7 July 2025. Copyright line matches Apple Music: 2025 Reekadia Limited/Ziiki media. · Apple Music album page, Worthy Challenger EP, HTTP 200, fetched this session, release date 3 July 2026. Credit line: (P) 2026 Ziiki Media. · MusicBrainz release query for Reekado Banks (MBID 7fbc76d0-8753-4b84-b02c-135856d7e152), fetched this session. Independently returns label Ziiki Media for Worthy Challenger EP and Banks Music for the 2019 Rora EP.
Read this before citing: No financial terms, term length or exclusivity scope were disclosed by any party for the Virgin Music Nigeria arrangement. Only one release, Feel Different (7 June 2023), was directly confirmed to carry the Virgin Music Nigeria credit; the newsroom announcement itself named Reekado Banks as a partner without describing a specific release or contract. It could not be confirmed from primary sources how many total releases the Virgin arrangement covered, when it lapsed, or whether it was ever formally ended rather than simply not renewed release to release. At least three different distributor or licensee names appear on Reekado Banks releases from 2019 to 2026 (Virgin Music Nigeria, Otherside Media Limited/MAD Solutions LLC, Reekadia Limited/Ziiki Media), and none of the transitions between them was announced publicly by any of the companies involved or by the artist. This record does not claim these are sequential exclusive deals; release-by-release licensing by an independent artist-owned imprint, without an overarching exclusive agreement, is an equally consistent reading of the evidence. Publishing rights are not addressed by any source consulted. Search-indicated but not yet directly fetched: possible Otherside Media/MAD Solutions credits on 'Ozumba Mbadiwe' (Oct 2021), 'Holla Me (Slow Version)' (21 Feb 2023) and 'Fakosi' (14 Nov 2023), and a possible Reekadia Limited/Ziiki Media credit on 'Mukutu' (10 April 2025); these are excluded from the confirmed timeline above pending direct source verification.
Virgin Music Group’s own newsroom named Reekado Banks as one of three initial partners when it opened a Lagos office on 1 September 2023, alongside the label Dvpper and a single by Darkoo featuring Ayra Starr. No terms were disclosed. What has been confirmed by directly reading release credits is narrower than the announcement: one Reekado Banks single, released three months before that announcement, carries a Virgin Music Nigeria credit. Every other Reekado Banks release checked in this record, before and after, carries a different distributor entirely, and none of the changes was ever announced by any party.
What the credit lines show, release by release
| Release | Date | Phonogram / copyright line | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feel Different (feat. Adekunle Gold & Maleek Berry), single | 7 June 2023 | ℗ 2023 Banks Music, Under Exclusive License to Virgin Music Nigeria | Apple Music |
| Virgin Music Group Nigeria office launch, naming Reekado Banks as a partner | 1 September 2023 | No release specified; no terms disclosed | Virgin Music Group newsroom |
| Visa, single | 14 June 2024 | ℗ 2024 Otherside Media Limited / MAD Solutions LLC | Apple Music |
| The Game Needs You, second album | 7 July 2025 | ℗ 2025 Reekadia Limited/Ziiki media | Apple Music and Deezer (matching) |
| Worthy Challenger, EP | 3 July 2026 | ℗ 2026 Ziiki Media | Apple Music, corroborated independently by MusicBrainz |
What the grammar of the one confirmed Virgin credit establishes
The Feel Different credit reads “Banks Music, Under Exclusive License to Virgin Music Nigeria.” The party named before “to” is the grantor; the party named after is the licensee. Banks Music, Reekado Banks’ own recording imprint, is the owner asserting copyright in the recording. Virgin Music Nigeria holds an exclusive licence to that one release. That is a licensing and distribution relationship, not an acquisition: Virgin did not buy Banks Music’s masters, and no source anywhere states that it tried to.
The announcement and the credit line do not line up cleanly. The newsroom post is dated 1 September 2023. The only release carrying the Virgin credit found in this record is dated 7 June 2023, nearly three months earlier. Either the arrangement predates the public launch, or the launch announcement described a partnership that had not yet produced the release it implied. Both readings are consistent with the evidence and neither can be ruled out from what was checked.
What happened to the arrangement
No source states that the Virgin Music Nigeria arrangement ended. It simply stops appearing. Visa, released less than a year after the Lagos launch, carries no trace of Virgin or Banks Music in its credit; it names Otherside Media Limited and MAD Solutions LLC, a Nigerian-founded, Houston-headquartered digital distributor, instead. By July 2025 the credit had changed again, to Reekadia Limited and Ziiki Media, and that pairing holds through the most recent release checked, the Worthy Challenger EP of July 2026.
Three distinct distributor or licensee names sit across a three-year span on the catalogue of one artist, and none of the transitions between them was announced by Reekado Banks, Virgin Music Group, Otherside Media, MAD Solutions, Reekadia Limited or Ziiki Media. It could not be established whether Banks Music, Otherside Media Limited and Reekadia Limited are the same legal entity operating under different trading names, or genuinely separate companies engaged one after another. Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission has no public search interface that could be queried for this record.
A phonogram credit line is not a contract. It records what a rights holder told a streaming service to display. It does not establish a term length, a royalty split, an advance, an exclusivity scope beyond the single release it appears on, or how or why an arrangement lapsed.
