Eleven releases by contestants from the Next Afrobeats Star competition name somebody other than the contestant as owner of the master recordings. On seven of them, dated 11 October 2025 to 13 April 2026, the owner given in the phonographic copyright position is “Next Afrobeats Star”, the competition itself. On the four dated 26 June 2026 to 14 October 2026, it is U-Records & Entertainment, the in-house label of Ultima Studios, the production company that makes the programme for MTN Nigeria. On nine of the eleven, the notice adds “under exclusive license to ONErpm”.
No contestant is named as owner on any of them.
That matters because MTN Nigeria has said the opposite on the record. At the Season 2 launch in July 2026, Emamoke Ogoro, the operator’s general manager for brands and communication, said of the first cohort: “They left the competition owning their intellectual property, with industry credentials and meaningful relationships in a music industry that now knows their names.” Season 2 coverage recorded the same claim in plainer words, that Season 1 contestants retained full ownership of their intellectual property.
The releases are the only published claim of record about these specific recordings, and they say something different. The full evidence sits in the deal record.
What the eleven releases say#
The phonographic copyright notice, the line beginning with the ℗ symbol, is where the party that delivered a release asserts ownership of the sound recording. It can be wrong, but it is the industry’s own standing declaration of who holds a master, and the only one published for these recordings. All eleven were read on Apple Music’s United States catalogue and then located again on Deezer against eleven distinct barcodes, which confirms they are eleven separate products rather than storefront duplicates.
| Date | Release | Owner named | Licensee named |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Oct 2025 | Next Afrobeats Star, “Take My Sound Global” | Next Afrobeats Star | None |
| 9 Nov 2025 | “Next Afrobeats Star S1 (The Pick Me Collection)”, 18 tracks, 18 acts | Next Afrobeats Star | None |
| 13 Dec 2025 | Davecash, “Omo Ologo” | Next Afrobeats Star | ONErpm, exclusive |
| 13 Dec 2025 | kaeko!, “Oba Ade” | Next Afrobeats Star | ONErpm, exclusive |
| 13 Dec 2025 | Tunexz, “You Can Call Me Tunexz” | Next Afrobeats Star | ONErpm, exclusive |
| 8 Apr 2026 | Ayo Benzi, “Heat & Heart” | Next Afrobeats Star | ONErpm, exclusive |
| 13 Apr 2026 | Somto O’laker, “Chapter 1” | Next Afrobeats Star | ONErpm, exclusive |
| 26 Jun 2026 | Lucky Yay!, “Wizmel Is Lucky” | U-Records & Entertainment Ltd | ONErpm, exclusive |
| 24 Jul 2026 | Ayo Benzi, “Melo / Mgbeke” | U-Records & Entertainment | ONErpm, exclusive |
| 31 Jul 2026 | Davecash, “Sare / Sade” | U-Records & Entertainment | ONErpm, exclusive |
| 14 Oct 2026 | Lucky Yay!, “Danciya” | U-Records & Entertainment | ONErpm, exclusive |
Two things move across that sequence. The first is the owner’s name, which switches from the competition to the promoter’s label at some point between 13 April and 26 June 2026. Nobody announced that switch, and no party has published anything describing what, if anything, moved between the two names.
The second is ONErpm’s arrival. The two earliest releases, the competition’s own single and the eighteen-track compilation of contestant tracks, carry no licensee at all. From 13 December 2025 onward, every release carries the exclusive licence line.
What an exclusive licence to ONErpm is, and is not#
This distinction is where most coverage of African signings goes wrong, so it is worth being exact.
“Under exclusive license to” is a grant of specified rights, for a term, from an owner to a licensee. During that term the owner cannot grant the same rights to anyone else. It is a stronger position than the ordinary “distributed by” credit, which can be non-exclusive. It is nonetheless not an assignment. ONErpm, on the face of these eleven releases, is the exclusive licensee of recordings it does not own. The owner is the competition, and then the label.
That is the same shape this desk has recorded on Angolan releases and across a long run of Nigerian catalogues: the aggregator takes an exclusive licence, the master stays upstream. The question is only ever who sits upstream. Here, it is not the performer.
Neither the term, the scope nor the territory of the ONErpm licence has been published. No release carries a territorial grant.
The same artists used to credit themselves#
The sharpest reading in this file is the before and after.
Ayo Benzi, the Season 1 winner, released “Oyin” and “Self Care” in 2021 and “Yaro” in 2023. All three carry a numbered artist-account credit of the kind a self-distribution service issues to an individual. Davecash’s own pre-competition releases read “Davecash global music”. Somto O’laker’s read “Somto O’laker/JUNGLE”. Lucky Yay!’s read “Stonebird Incorporated”.
Four artists, four credits naming either the artist or the artist’s own imprint. After the competition, the same four appear on releases that name the competition or the promoter’s label instead.
There is one loose thread. Ayo Benzi’s pre-competition project “Joy is Coming” appears twice on Deezer, with five identical recording identifiers across both entries: once in January 2025 under a distribution company’s name, and once again in March 2026 under his own. The same recordings were delivered a second time, in his own name, one month before his post-prize EP appeared under the competition’s. No party has explained the second delivery and this publication does not claim to know why it happened.
What was and was not paid#
No consideration for any of these recordings has been disclosed by any party. The only figures in the public record are prize values, and no document states that a prize value is the price of a master.
Those prize figures do not agree with each other either. MTN’s own competition page describes the Season 1 top prize in its body copy as a 225 million naira recording deal plus a car and a new home, and in its frequently asked questions as “a $100,000 OneRPM record deal”. The winner’s announced award was 150 million naira. This desk has already documented that spread in its record on the Season 1 prize, and this new reading answers the question that record left open: who holds the masters.
MTN’s live page, fetched on 18 October 2026, says nothing at all about ownership of recordings. The terms and conditions link in its footer resolves to the operator’s site-general terms, not to competition rules. No competition rules naming a rights position could be found anywhere.
What this means for artists#
First, a talent competition prize and a recording deal are not the same object, and the second is where the value sits. A production budget, a marketing spend, a car and a house are consideration. If the recordings made with that budget are filed under the promoter’s name, the artist has been paid for making a record that the promoter owns. That may be exactly what the contestant agreed to. It may also be the first time the contestant reads it clearly.
Second, if you are told you keep your intellectual property, ask which intellectual property. “IP” covers the composition, the recording, the artist name and the audiovisual footage, and they travel separately. A contestant can plausibly retain every composition copyright and still hold no share of the master. Nothing located here names a publisher or administrator for any of these songs, so the composition side is simply unknown.
Third, check your own ℗ line after every release. It costs nothing, it is public, and it is the only ownership statement about your work that the whole world can read. If it does not name you or a company you control, you are entitled to ask the party that filed it why, in writing, and to ask for the clause that permits it.
Fourth, the practical ask in any competition or development deal is a reversion. A promoter that funds recordings has a real interest in recouping. An artist has a real interest in getting the master back once it has. Those interests are reconcilable in a dated contract clause. They are not reconcilable in a press statement.
What could not be established#
No agreement between any contestant and the competition, Ultima Studios, U-Records & Entertainment or ONErpm has been published, so nothing here establishes what any contestant signed. A copyright notice is an assertion by the party that delivered the release, not an instrument of transfer, and it is possible for a notice to be wrong or out of date.
The competition’s own website could not be reached from this publication’s server on 18 October 2026, with connections refused on both web ports; archived copies could not be retrieved either. The statement that U-Records is Ultima’s in-house label therefore rests on this desk’s own capture of that site in September 2026 and on Ultima’s directory entry, and could not be re-confirmed at source.
Composition ownership is unestablished. Two international performing-rights repertory searches were blocked to this server, and the Nigerian collecting society’s domain did not resolve. The corporate status of “Next Afrobeats Star” as a legal entity is also unestablished: it is the title of a television programme, Nigeria’s company register has no public search this publication can run, and no label entry for it exists in the open rights registries. For that reason it is named here exactly as it appears on the releases and no company record has been created for it.
Season 2 entries closed on 17 August 2026 and no Season 2 contestant release exists yet on either service, so nothing can be said about the rights position on recordings that have not been made.
MTN Nigeria, Ultima Studios, U-Records & Entertainment and ONErpm are invited to publish the rights schedule, or the reversion terms, that would settle this. Until one of them does, the eleven notices stand as the record.
