Epic Records never owned Sho Madjozi’s masters. For the three years she released through the Sony Music Entertainment division, her own records said so on their face: “Black Cinderella, Inc. under exclusive license to Epic Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment”. Ownership sat with Black Cinderella. Epic held a licence. Since November 2024, the credit has read simply “Sho Madjozi”.
That sequence, read release by release out of Apple’s catalogue on 30 September 2026 and checked against Deezer and MusicBrainz, is the closest thing to a paper trail that exists for one of South Africa’s most exported artists. It is also a case study in how little of an African artist’s rights position is ever announced, and how much of it is nonetheless published in plain sight, in eight words at the bottom of a release page.
What actually changed hands#
Five different companies have been credited as the owner of a Sho Madjozi recording since 2017.
The earliest release in her Apple catalogue, “Dumi Hi Phone” with PS DJz, carries a 2017 phonogram year and Muthaland Entertainment. Nothing else about that company could be established from any document.
From March 2018 the credit is Flourish and Multiply. That covers “Huku”, “Wakanda Forever” with Ycee, the 13-track album “Limpopo Champions League” of December 2018, and “John Cena”, the September 2019 single that carried her name well beyond South Africa. Deezer records the same label independently, as “Flourish & Multiply”, and MusicBrainz records it on both the album and “John Cena”. Three catalogues, populated from different delivery feeds, agree.
Then the wording changes character. On “What A Life”, the nine-track project of 27 November 2020, the line reads “Black Cinderella, Inc. under exclusive license to Epic Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment”. The same credit appears on “Toro” with DDG in November 2022 and on “Chale” in February 2023.
In October 2024, the single “Kadigong” with Gemini Major and Ntando Yamahlubi arrives credited to Black Major, a Cape Town company that describes itself on its own site as a music agency. From 22 November 2024, starting with “Ndi Rine” alongside Makhadzi and Ugatsheni, the phonogram credit is the artist’s own name.
Licence, not assignment, and why the difference is the whole story#
The symbol in front of that line marks the owner of the sound recording, and the industry’s convention for “A under exclusive license to B” is settled: A owns the master, B has bought the exclusive right to exploit it for some period. The asset does not move. The right to sell it does.
This is not a technicality. An artist whose masters have been assigned to a label has sold the recording. An artist whose company licenses masters to a label still owns them, and at some point, on terms nobody outside the deal can see, gets them back. The credit on Sho Madjozi’s Epic-era releases is the second kind. She is not recorded anywhere as having sold those recordings to Sony.
The structure is Epic’s habitual approach to African signings rather than something unusual built for her. The desk has recorded the identical wording on Tyla’s catalogue, where FAX Records is the owner and Epic the exclusive licensee. It appears across the continent’s biggest records, in different combinations: Open Mic Productions owns the “Jerusalema” master and licensed it to Warner Music France, and Burna Boy’s masters sit with his own company while Atlantic’s licence carves Africa out entirely.
Black Cinderella, Inc. is a name and nothing else#
Here the trail stops, and it is worth being precise about where.
The company named as owner of three years of Sho Madjozi’s recorded output appears in no register this desk could search. A UK Companies House name search returns no entity called Black Cinderella. A query against the New York State active corporations dataset for any entity containing “Black Cinderella” returns an empty set. California’s business register answered every attempt with an HTTP 429 rate limit, and Delaware publishes no queryable endpoint at all. The “Inc.” suffix tells you it is a corporation somewhere. It does not tell you where, who its officers are, who holds its shares, or whether the artist controls it.
So the most important fact in the chain, whether the owner of those masters is effectively Sho Madjozi or somebody else, is not established. It would be easy, and wrong, to assume an artist-named-sounding company is the artist’s. Nothing reviewed says that.
Nobody announced any of it#
There is no press release for the start of the Epic relationship and none for its end. The 2020 to 2023 window in this account is derived from release dates, which bound the period in which records went out under that credit and do nothing more. The agreement certainly began before the first release. Whether it has ended at all is unknown: the last record carrying the credit is “Chale”, 3 February 2023, and a catalogue can go quiet for reasons that have nothing to do with a contract expiring.
Epic’s own website carries a roster list that does not include her. That proves nothing. Its page sitemap contains exactly one URL and its public search endpoint returns zero results for every query tested, including for artists it plainly does represent. An unusable index is not a source.
Term, territory, royalty rate, advance, option, reversion: none of it has been disclosed by any party, in any document, for any of the five arrangements. The credit line is identical on the United States and South African storefronts, so no territorial split is even visible in the metadata, which is a different thing from there not being one.
The same song, two owners, four months apart#
One detail deserves attention because it shows how fast these positions now move. “Kadigong” was issued on 4 October 2024 credited to Black Major, and Deezer independently records Black Major as the label. The remix, out on 27 February 2025 with Tiwa Savage and Zeze Kingston added, carries the credit “Sho Madjozi”. The barcodes sit in different blocks, 724997 for the original and 644401 for the remix, which is what a change of delivery route looks like.
Black Major’s Artists page, read on 30 September 2026, lists The Joy, Bongeziwe Mabandla, DJ LAG, Radio Sechaba, Bokani Dyer, Dear Ribane, Manthe Ribane, KDOLLAHZ and BCUC. Sho Madjozi is not on it. What that October credit represented, and why it did not survive into the remix of the same song, is not documented anywhere.
Publishing, meanwhile, is a complete blank. No document reviewed identifies who publishes or administers her compositions. Masters and publishing are separate assets under separate contracts, and nothing here touches the second.
What this means for artists#
Four practical things follow from this record.
Read your own credit line, and treat it as a disclosure. The phonogram credit is the one place your rights position is published to the entire world, and most artists never check what their distributor delivered. If it names a company you do not recognise, or omits one you expect, that is worth a written query today. If it reads “X under exclusive license to Y”, the master is with X.
Licence beats assignment, and the wording is the proof. If you are negotiating with a major label division, the difference between “under exclusive license to” and a flat label credit is the difference between lending the asset and selling it. Ask for the credit wording to be specified in the agreement, not left to whoever uploads the file.
An owning company is only as useful as your control of it. Putting masters into a corporate vehicle is standard and sensible. It protects nothing if you cannot show who owns the vehicle. Keep your own register documents, because if a dispute arrives, the question will not be what the credit said, it will be who held the shares.
Silence at the end of a deal is normal, and it costs you. Labels announce signings and almost never announce expiries. That asymmetry leaves artists carrying a public association with a company that may no longer represent them, while the actual state of their rights is legible only to people willing to read barcodes. Where a relationship has genuinely ended, a short statement from the artist’s side is the cheapest correction available.
The fuller evidence, including every source URL, every negative register check and the full list of what could not be established, is on the deal record for this transaction.
