Major League DJz Signed to Atlantic Through a Loan-Out Called Aggrey Space. No Release Has Named Either Since January 2024.

Status: established for 2023 to 2024, unresolved since. Major League DJz’s own lead releases carried a phonogram credit reading “Aggrey Space LLC under exclusive license to Atlantic Recording Corporation” in September 2023 and January 2024, eighteen months after the duo’s Atlantic signing was announced. No Major League DJz lead release since has named Atlantic or Aggrey Space. Atlantic’s own artist page still lists the duo, and no party has announced any change.

Major League DJz are Banele and Bandile Mbere, twin DJ producers from Johannesburg whose Balcony Mix Africa series helped carry amapiano to international audiences. On 16 March 2022 the duo announced, on social media, an international recording deal with Atlantic Records, becoming the first amapiano act signed to the label. The late South African rapper Riky Rick, who died days before the announcement, was credited by the duo with having negotiated it. No financial terms were disclosed then, and none has been disclosed since.

What the credit line says, release by release

A phonogram credit printed on an artist’s own release names the party that holds the sound recording copyright and, where a licence sits over it, the party permitted to exploit it. It is not a contract, but it is the most current public record of what a distributor was instructed to print, and it can be checked without one. Filtering Major League DJz’s catalogue to releases where the duo is billed first, ahead of any collaborator, leaves nine own-lead releases across five years.

All lines were read directly from Apple Music’s catalogue pages between 22 and 24 September 2026. The Margaret release date and label information were cross checked against MusicBrainz, which records the same release under the Columbia imprint, a Sony Music Entertainment label, on barcode 196872921083. Two other 2025 and 2026 features were checked and excluded because Major League DJz is not the billed lead: a Riton single credits Riton Music Limited, an Avicii posthumous release credits Pinguettes Recordings AB under exclusive license to Universal Music AB, and a track on Omarion’s album O2 – Part 1 credits Omarion’s own label. Those credit lines describe the billed lead artist’s arrangement, not the duo’s own.

The loan-out behind the 2022 deal

Aggrey Space, LLC is a California limited liability company, entity number 202131610138, formed on 10 November 2021, four months before the Atlantic announcement. Its registered managers are Bandile Mbere and Banele Mbere, the two men who perform as Major League DJz. The company has no releases, roster or public catalogue of its own; it exists to hold rights on behalf of its two managers. Structures of this kind, usually called loan-out or furnishing companies, are ordinary in major-label recording deals: the artist’s own entity retains the copyright in the masters and licenses a label to manufacture and exploit them for a term, rather than assigning the copyright outright. On both releases that name it, Aggrey Space is listed first, as owner. Atlantic is listed second, as exclusive licensee. That ordering describes a signing, not a sale. Major League DJz did not sell their masters to Atlantic; their own company licensed them to Atlantic, at least for the two releases that make this explicit.

The line that stopped appearing

Margaret is the last Major League DJz lead release to name Atlantic or Aggrey Space in any capacity. Five own-lead releases have followed it, running from March 2025 to September 2026, a period of exactly as long as the period in which the Atlantic credit appeared, and none of the five repeats it. Come With Me, the March 2025 collaboration with British singer Jorja Smith, carries a flat Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited credit with no Aggrey Space or Atlantic name attached anywhere on the release. Every own-lead release since carries a credit to a small independent operation instead: Untitled Audio, a South African collective that recurs as both a featured act and a phonogram owner across three of the five, plus BAKE Records once and KLUB RECORD once. None of these five is Atlantic, Sony, or an entity this desk could connect to either.

Two explanations for the Sony credit on Come With Me are both plausible, and neither is established. It may reflect a change to Major League DJz’s own arrangement. It may equally reflect nothing more than Jorja Smith’s own recording relationship, since a collaborative single’s phonogram credit commonly follows the featured guest rather than the host act, and Columbia and Sony are her established label environment. What can be said without guessing is only that no Major League DJz release since has repeated either the Atlantic credit or the Sony credit, and that the pattern which has followed, a rotating set of small independent and collective imprints, looks nothing like either major.

Atlantic’s own artist directory continued to list Major League DJz as of this record’s publication. Label rosters are not kept current in real time and a stale listing proves nothing on its own, but it weighs against reading the credit-line gap as a confirmed exit. No statement from Atlantic, Aggrey Space, Sony or the duo describing any change was located.

What this means for artists

The wording of a phonogram credit is free to check and it says something specific. “Aggrey Space LLC, under exclusive license to Atlantic Recording Corporation” describes an artist’s own company retaining the recording copyright and renting out the right to exploit it for a period. That is a fundamentally different, and generally better, position than one in which a label is named alone as owner. An artist weighing a major-label offer can ask, before signing anything, whether the deal will be structured through their own loan-out company the way this one was, and can then watch their own future release credits to see whether that structure is actually being honoured in public metadata, not just in the contract they were shown.

The second lesson is about reading silence correctly. A credit line disappearing is a fact about what got printed, not proof of what happened to a contract. Majors do not typically announce the end of a deal any more than they announce the start of a quiet one, and an artist’s own subsequent release pattern, spreading across smaller collective labels rather than continuing under a major imprint, is suggestive without being conclusive. Artists and their teams should treat their own catalogue metadata as an asset worth auditing regularly, both to catch this kind of drift early and because inconsistent crediting can complicate their own royalty and rights claims later.

What is not established

Whether Major League DJz’s licence to Atlantic has ended, lapsed, been renegotiated, or continues on releases this record did not capture could not be established. No statement from any of the four named companies or from the duo was located. Deal value was never disclosed at signing and remains undisclosed; no source obtained states a figure, term length, advance or territory for the Atlantic licence, and none is stated here. Whether the Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited credit on Come With Me reflects any arrangement involving Major League DJz directly, as opposed to an arrangement following Jorja Smith, could not be established. What Untitled Audio is, structurally, beyond appearing as both a credited act and a phonogram owner across three 2026 releases, could not be established; no company registration, website or public statement identifying it was located. South Africa’s company registry exposes no public search API, so no local filing on either Major League DJz or Untitled Audio was obtainable; the only corporate record obtained anywhere in this chain is the California filing for Aggrey Space itself. No party was reached for comment before publication.