On 8 August 2018, Ibrahim Ayodeji Balogun, the Nigerian artist Wizkid, ceased to be a person with significant control of Starboy Entertainment Limited, the company named in the copyright line of nine years of his records. The same day, he resigned as its director and his manager, Jadine Jackie Pollock, was notified as holding shares of 75 per cent or more. She has been the only person on that register since. On 16 June 2026, Companies House dissolved the company by compulsory strike-off. Read on 10 October 2026, it has not been restored.
Those facts come from the UK public register, read directly. They do not tell you who owns Wizkid’s masters. They tell you something narrower: the vehicle nine years of phonogram credits point at has not been under the artist’s control for most of its life, and it no longer exists.
What the control register actually records#
Every UK company must keep a register of the people who control it, and Companies House publishes it. Thresholds start at 25 per cent of shares or voting rights, and holdings appear in bands. For company 10075091 the register carries one active entry and no statements. Balogun was notified on 6 April 2016, shortly after incorporation on 21 March 2016, with three natures of control: 75 per cent or more of the shares, 75 per cent or more of the voting rights, and the right to appoint or remove directors. His entry is marked ceased on 8 August 2018. Pollock, born October 1983 and British, was notified that day with one nature of control, 75 per cent or more of the shares, became a director, and was the only serving director at strike-off.
Be precise about what that proves. A cessation entry is consistent with a sale of shares, and equally consistent with a gift, a dilutive allotment or a reorganisation. The register does not distinguish between them and no party has explained it, so this publication does not call the 2018 event a sale or an acquisition. It says what the document says: control changed hands. The register also cannot show whether Balogun kept a holding below the threshold, or whether Pollock’s stake is beneficial or held on trust.
Nine years of credits, and the moment they flipped direction#
The phonogram credit, the line beginning with the ℗ symbol, is a claim about who owns a sound recording. Nobody checks it, but labels take it seriously because it is the notice that supports an infringement claim. Read from the Apple catalogue in the Nigerian and United States storefronts on 10 October 2026, Wizkid’s credits say one thing until 2022 and the reverse from late 2023.
On eleven releases from Sounds From the Other Side and Fever in 2017 through Made In Lagos to More Love Less Ego in 2022, the credit reads: Starboy Entertainment Ltd., under exclusive license to RCA Records. Starboy is in the owner position, RCA is the licensee. On the S2 EP of 22 December 2023, then Piece of My Heart, Kese (Dance) and the Morayo album in 2024, the sentence is inverted: RCA Records, under exclusive license from Starboy Entertainment Ltd. RCA has moved into the owner position.
The change falls between 16 November 2022 and 22 December 2023. No source consulted explains it and neither company has commented. The later wording is also internally inconsistent, because an exclusive licensee is not the owner of the phonogram: a credit cannot put a party in the owner slot and call it a licensee in the same breath. Something changed in how that line was drafted. Whether anything changed underneath it is not established, and this piece does not assert that ownership moved.
One more credit matters. REAL, Vol. 1, released 23 January 2026, reads: Starboy Entertainment Ltd. / GIRAN Republic / EMPIRE. RCA is gone, and Deezer’s record for the same release carries the same three names under UPC 199316437584. That is the last credit naming the company found anywhere, five months before strike-off. Every Wizkid release located since 16 June 2026 is a feature on somebody else’s master, credited to that party.
Owns, administers, distributes, licenses: four different things#
An assignment transfers the copyright. The buyer becomes the owner and the seller keeps only what the contract reserves.
An exclusive licence leaves the copyright where it is and grants someone else the exclusive right to exploit it, for a term and a territory. The licensee can usually sue infringers and often controls release strategy, but it does not own the recording, and the right comes back when the term ends.
Distribution is narrower: moving the file to shops and collecting the money, usually for a fee rather than a share of ownership. Administration is the publishing equivalent, registering works and accounting for them without taking the copyright.
The credits to 2022 describe the second of these, with Starboy Entertainment Limited as owner. Our investigation into D’Banj’s catalogue found the same structure from the other side: an exclusive licence held by a distributor, not ownership. That gap is the gap between a catalogue that reverts and a catalogue that is gone.
No charges, no intangibles, net liabilities of 106,384 pounds#
Two further findings bear on what the company held. Its charges register reads zero: zero registered, zero outstanding, zero satisfied, across its entire life. No lender ever took security over the catalogue, which rules out the most common way a catalogue gets encumbered.
Its last accounts, to 31 March 2024, show net liabilities of 106,384 pounds, deepened from 21,056 pounds a year earlier. Debtors of 212,792 pounds and cash of 209,104 pounds sat against creditors falling due within one year of 529,288 pounds. Share capital is 100 pounds, the employee count is one, and the only fixed asset class is computer equipment at 1,008 pounds. There is no intangible assets line.
Resist the obvious reading. Under FRS 102 Section 1A, which these filleted small company accounts were prepared under, self-created recording copyrights are not ordinarily capitalised. A company can own a hit catalogue and show nothing for it. The absence establishes only that this company never recognised a purchased catalogue, and that its balance sheet was insolvent before strike-off.
The Starboy company that is still alive#
A register search for “Starboy” returns 30 companies. Only two share the Oxford Street address: the dissolved 10075091 and Starboy Touring LLP, OC431840, a limited liability partnership incorporated 22 May 2020 and still active. Its two designated members, appointed on incorporation and both recorded as active, are Balogun and Pollock.
It is delinquent: accounts to 31 March 2023 are overdue, as is a confirmation statement due 4 June 2026. Companies House publishes no control register for LLPs, so the partnership interests behind those two names could not be established. No phonogram credit naming it has been found and nothing establishes that it holds any recorded-music right. Its name points at live work, which is an inference from a name, recorded as one.
Where this site’s own earlier records do not hold#
Contradiction is a finding, so: our directory entry for Starboy Entertainment Limited calls it Wizkid’s own imprint and names Balogun under ownership. On the register that holds only for 6 April 2016 to 8 August 2018. It is flagged for correction, not quietly rewritten. Our earlier record on his masters calls the company the credited copyright owner, then quotes the Morayo credit, which names RCA Records in that position. The credit wins.
What this means for artists#
The company in your credit line is a thing someone owns, and it may not be you. An imprint bearing your stage name tells a fan the record is yours. It tells a lawyer nothing about shares. If the imprint in your ℗ line is a company, find out who sits on its control register, and keep checking, because that register changes and nobody will tell you when it does.
Dissolution is not neutral for the rights inside a company. Section 1012 of the Companies Act 2006 vests the property of a dissolved company in the Crown as bona vacantia, but only property still beneficially held at dissolution, and no document read here says what this one held. The copyrights may have been assigned out beforehand, may sit elsewhere, or may be caught. Restoration is possible, and this company used it once, dissolved in December 2022 and restored in June 2023. If your masters sit in a company, an overdue confirmation statement is the first step of a process that ends in a Gazette notice.
Read the direction of your own credit line. “A, under exclusive license to B” and “B, under exclusive license from A” are not stylistic variants. The first name is the ownership claim. Artists signing into major label systems, in Lagos or Johannesburg or Accra, should check which way round the delivered metadata reads on every release, because what a distributor delivers is what the world sees.
Limits of this record#
What happened to the recording copyrights on 16 June 2026 is not established. Nor is why control changed in 2018, nor whether the 2023 credit inversion reflects any transfer, nor whether any publishing right ever sat in either company. No publisher or administrator for Wizkid’s songwriting share was located: ASCAP’s repertory search refused this server, the United States Copyright Office portal exposed no query endpoint, and BMI’s search path did not resolve.
Everything above comes from documents read on 10 October 2026: five Companies House pages for 10075091, including the control and charges registers, the accounts to 31 March 2024, two pages for OC431840, a register-wide search, the Apple catalogue in two storefronts, two Deezer records and a MusicBrainz query. No party named here has published a statement about any of it.
