Himra’s Master Credits Left Warner’s Distribution Pipeline for Sony’s in May 2026. The Album Names 1X and Slimak Production as Owners, and Epic Records Nowhere At All.

Apple's delivered phonogram credits date four changes in the owner position on Himra's catalogue since 2021. The May 2026 album names 1X and Slimak Production as owners and Sony Music Entertainment France SAS as distributor only. Epic Records, named in trade coverage as the signing label, appears in no rights metadata.

Yewande Coker

October 8, 2026 2 min read

Deal sheet

Status

Change in the delivered phonogram credit, first observed on a release dated 29 May 2026 and still current at 8 October 2026 for the album. Consideration not disclosed. The underlying agreement has not been seen: this record is built on the rights metadata the parties themselves delivered to retail, plus the French business register, and it is stated at that level.

Type

Distribution

Parties

Def Jam Africa, Universal Music Africa, ODPMG (Tieme Music), ADA Worldwide, Warner Music France SAS, Slimak Production, Sony Music Entertainment France, Epic Records

Amount

None disclosed Not disclosed. No amount, advance, royalty rate, term or option structure appears in any document located.

A figure of four million euros, rendered in Ivorian coverage as 2.6 billion CFA francs, circulates on video channels and social accounts in connection with the reported Epic Records France signing. It is not confirmed by Epic Records France, by Sony Music Entertainment, by Sony Music Entertainment France SAS or by the artist's representatives in any document this desk could fetch, and it does not appear in the trade announcement itself. It is recorded here as an unverified claim and is not published as a deal value.

No equity, no share transfer and no catalogue purchase is evidenced. The transaction type evidenced is a change in the named owner position and a change in the named distributor, nothing more.

Rights covered

Master recordings only. Publishing is not established.

WHAT THE CREDIT ESTABLISHES
The phonogram symbol identifies the party claiming the rights in the sound recording. On the 17-track album SORRY I'M BAD, Apple collection 6771425191, the delivered credit reads "℗ 2026 1X / SLIMAK, distributed by Sony Music Entertainment France SAS". Two parties are named in the owner position, 1X and Slimak, and a third is named performing a distinct and named function, distribution. Deezer, queried independently, returns the label field for the same album, UPC 196874423622, as "1X / SLIMAK PRODUCTION". Two platforms, supplied through different pipelines, carry the same owner position.

A DATEABLE CHAIN, NOT A SINGLE EVENT
Apple's catalogue for artist 1197313464 returns 103 rows and dates four owner positions:
2018 to 2020, credits naming Himra and HVN, Mix Records, Machette Gang and N'djadan Prod.
16 July 2021 to 7 July 2023, "℗ Def Jam Recordings Africa" across ten releases including the albums Ivoire Drill King, 9 tracks, 16 July 2021, and IDK2, 19 tracks, 7 July 2023. Deezer returns the label field on both of those albums as "Universal Music Africa".
24 November 2023, the 15-track album 1X, "℗ 2023 Tieme Music". From 28 June 2024 the Tieme Music credits add "Distribution exclusive ADA France / Warner Music France". From May 2025 the owner position reads "℗ 2025 1X / Tieme Music" with the same distributor string. The last lead release carrying it is DACHIBA KOUMGBA TCHAIBA : DALSHIM, 27 tracks, 14 November 2025.
April and May 2026, "℗ 2026 1X" alone, with no distributor and no Tieme Music. BARA BARA, 15 May 2026, adds Slimak. SORRY I'M BAD, 29 May 2026, adds Sony Music Entertainment France SAS as distributor.

WHAT THE CREDIT CANNOT ESTABLISH
A phonogram line names an owner position. It cannot distinguish a master assigned to a label by the artist from a master a label owned from the first session, nor from an artist-owned master released under a label's name. It does not reveal the term, the territory of the underlying grant, reversion, or whether the owner position reflects full assignment or a corporate joint venture between the two named parties. The internal relationship between 1X and Slimak Production is not established, nor is whether 1X is a company, an imprint or the artist's own trading name: no French registration for "1X" or "1X Music" could be located.

NO LICENCE TO THE DISTRIBUTOR IS EVIDENCED
The credit uses "distributed by" and not "under exclusive licence to" or "licensed from". On this wording Sony Music Entertainment France SAS is evidenced as performing distribution, and is not evidenced as holding an ownership or licensed interest in the masters. This desk draws no inference either way about rights it does not name.

EPIC RECORDS IS NOT IN THE METADATA
Trade coverage reports that Epic Records France, a Sony Music France label, announced the signing of the artist. Epic Records appears in no phonogram credit, in no Apple collection record and in no Deezer label field located for any release in the catalogue. The documents evidence a Sony Music Entertainment France SAS distribution function, not an Epic Records ownership or licensing position. The two claims are compatible, because a frontline label signing can be delivered through a corporate distribution entity, but only one of them is documented.

A CONTRADICTION IN WARNER'S OWN CREDITS
The album JEUNE & RICHE, 17 tracks, 25 July 2024, carries "Distribution exclusive Warner Music France, Label Atlantic, ℗ 2024 Tieme Music". Releases on either side of it in the same period instead read "Distribution exclusive ADA France / Warner Music France". ADA is Warner Music Group's independent-label distribution arm; Atlantic is a Warner frontline label. These describe materially different commercial relationships, and the delivered credits do not agree about which applied. That release also carries a barcode outside the Tieme Music pattern: 085365044852, against 5026854228310 on the November 2025 Tieme Music album. The contradiction is recorded as a finding and is not resolved here.

A THIRD WARNER-ERA COUNTERPARTY
The release Kpakassez les !, 9 January 2026, reads "℗ 2026 1X / Fédération Ivoirienne de Football / AMS, distribution exclusive Warner Music Africa FR". It is the only release located in which a sports federation appears in the owner position, and the only one naming Warner Music Africa FR rather than ADA France. It is noted, not interpreted.

PUBLISHING IS A SEPARATE CHAIN AND IS NOT ESTABLISHED
Nothing located identifies the publisher or administrator of the underlying compositions for any period, in Côte d'Ivoire, in France or elsewhere. The Bureau Ivoirien du Droit d'Auteur and the French societies were not able to be searched for this writer's works through any public interface this desk could reach. No publishing claim is made.

IDENTIFIER OBSERVATIONS
Of the 17 tracks on the May 2026 album, 16 carry ISRC registrant prefix FR9W1 and one, BARA BARA, carries QM728, the prefix it already had as a single released on 15 May 2026 under "℗ 2026 1X / Slimak". The Def Jam-era albums carry registrant prefix CIUM7 and barcodes 602438628445 and 602458250893. The two self-credited October 2026 singles carry barcodes 5064090081153 and 5064089883041 and ISRC prefixes GXLF2 and GXLEL. Registrant prefixes are allocated identifiers and are treated here as observations about delivery pipelines, not as findings about which company owns anything.

Territory

Not stated in any document. The credits name no territory.

WHAT CAN BE SAID ABOUT REACH
The album credit is identical on the Apple Music storefronts for Côte d'Ivoire, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Senegal and Canada, checked on 8 October 2026. That evidences that the same rights metadata was delivered worldwide. It does not evidence a worldwide grant: a distributor can deliver a single metadata package across all storefronts under a territorially limited agreement, and storefront availability is not a statement of contractual territory.

THE CORPORATE GEOGRAPHY IS FRENCH, THE REPERTOIRE IS IVORIAN
Both parties in the owner position that could be resolved to a registration are French companies in the Paris suburbs: ODPMG at Puteaux and Slimak Production at Gennevilliers. The named distributor, Sony Music Entertainment France SAS, is Paris-registered, SIREN 542055603. The artist is Ivorian and the repertoire is Ivorian. No Ivorian company could be identified in the owner position on any release from 2021 onwards, and the Nigeria CAC and Ivorian registers offer no public interface through which to test for one.

ADA FRANCE DOES NOT RESOLVE
The Warner-era credits name "ADA France" as distributor alongside Warner Music France. The French register returns no 59.20Z company under that name: the only "ADA FRANCE" match, SIREN 950623793, is a 46.45Z wholesale business in Strasbourg and is not the music distributor. Warner Music France, SIREN 712029370, records trading names including WEA Music, Parlophone, Les Nouvelles Editions, Elektra France, Rec. 118, 118Lab and We Are 360, and ADA is not among them. ADA France is therefore recorded as a distribution brand used in the credit rather than as an identified French legal entity, and this record makes no claim about which Warner company contracted.

Announced

2026-05-29

Primary document

Rights registry

Sources

Read this before citing: The underlying agreements have not been seen. Nothing in this record should be read as a description of contract terms.

This record establishes that the delivered phonogram credit on Himra's recorded output changed, when it changed, and which parties each successive credit names. It does not establish how or why it changed. It does not establish that any master was sold, assigned or licensed, because a credit change is consistent with assignment, with expiry and non-renewal, with a new recording agreement covering only new masters, and with a corporate reorganisation among the named parties. Which of those occurred is not documented.

Four specific limits. First, the status of the pre-May-2026 catalogue is unknown: the credits on the Def Jam-era and Tieme Music-era releases were unchanged as at 8 October 2026, which indicates those earlier masters did not move with the artist, but a retail credit is not a title deed and back-catalogue ownership is not established. Second, Epic Records France is named as the signing label in trade coverage and appears in no rights metadata; this record reports both facts and resolves neither into the other. Third, the identification of the Tieme Music credit with ODPMG, SIREN 913075834, is a strong match on activity code, incorporation date and trade description, not a proven identity, because no document naming both ODPMG and Tieme Music could be located. Fourth, the two singles credited to Abdul Rahim and to HIMRA in late September and early October 2026 name no distributor, and whether they fall inside or outside the May arrangement could not be determined.

Checked without result: an official newsroom release from Sony Music Entertainment France or Epic Records France naming the artist. sonymusic.fr and epicrecords.fr both return HTTP 200 but their on-site search is client-rendered and returns no server-side results even for a control artist already known to be signed to the label, so the absence of the artist from those pages is not treated as evidence of anything. No SEC filing names the artist or either French owner-position company; EDGAR full-text search was run across sixteen African music, genre and market terms for 2025 and 2026. Companies House was not applicable. MusicBrainz holds the artist, mbid 1b0ad107-20ce-45fe-881b-9c89f61a6da8, and a TIEME MUSIC label entity, mbid 8be2a0fb-848d-4725-b8b7-76b9d905116f, but both are thinly populated: the artist record carries seven release groups against 103 in Apple's catalogue, and the label record has no country, type or label code. It was not usable as a corroborating rights source here.

The phonogram credit on Himra’s recorded output has named four different owner positions in five years, and the delivered metadata dates every change. This record sets out the chain and separates what the documents establish from what trade coverage has asserted.

Apple’s catalogue for the artist, pulled on 8 October 2026 and returning 103 rows, shows the owner position passing from the artist’s own name and a set of Abidjan imprints, to Def Jam Recordings Africa between 16 July 2021 and 7 July 2023, to Tieme Music from 24 November 2023, and then to a pairing of 1X and Slimak Production during May 2026. Across the 2024 and 2025 Tieme Music releases the credit adds a distributor: “Distribution exclusive ADA France / Warner Music France”. On the 17-track album SORRY I’M BAD, released 29 May 2026, the credit instead reads “℗ 2026 1X / SLIMAK, distributed by Sony Music Entertainment France SAS”. That string is byte-identical on the Ivorian, French, United States, British, Senegalese and Canadian storefronts.

Trade coverage announced that Epic Records France, a Sony Music France label, had signed the artist. Epic Records appears nowhere in the delivered rights metadata on either Apple or Deezer. What the documents evidence is narrower and different: a named distribution function performed by Sony Music Entertainment France SAS over masters whose owner position is held by 1X and Slimak Production. A signing announcement and a phonogram credit are not the same instrument, and this record does not merge them.

Two further changes post-date the album. On 29 September 2026 the owner position reads “℗ 2026 Abdul Rahim” and on 4 October 2026 it reads “℗ 2026 HIMRA”, with no distributor named in either credit and Deezer returning the label field for both as “Independent”. Whether those singles sit inside or outside the arrangement evidenced in May could not be established.

The French national business register resolves the corporate parties. Tieme Music matches ODPMG, SIREN 913075834, a 59.20Z sound recording and music publishing company seated at 188 rue Gerhard, Puteaux, incorporated 28 April 2022, with one recorded gérant and no filed accounts. Slimak Production is SIREN 879202216, a 59.20Z company seated at 18 boulevard Gallieni, Gennevilliers, incorporated 14 November 2019, with two recorded officers. Sony Music Entertainment France SAS is SIREN 542055603. Warner Music France is SIREN 712029370, and its registered trading names do not include ADA: no separate French music registration for “ADA France” could be located.

No consideration is disclosed in any document located. No publishing or administration relationship is evidenced for any period of the chain.

Deal sheet

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