Ninja Tune
London independent record company, named phonogram owner on Sampa the Great's 2019 release.
- Based in
- London, United Kingdom
- Website
- ninjatune.net
Ninja Tune is the London independent named as the owner of the sound recording copyright on The Return, the 2019 Sampa the Great album that won the Australian Music Prize. The phonographic line on that release reads, flatly, “Ninja Tune”. It carries no licence wording and it does not name the artist or any company of hers. On its face that is a claim of ownership of the recording, not of a licence over it.
The UK register carries three active companies in the group: NINJA TUNE LIMITED, company number 04770301, incorporated 19 May 2003; NINJA TUNE RECORDS LTD, number 04926214, incorporated 8 October 2003; and NINJA TUNE HOLDINGS LIMITED, number 10713956, incorporated 6 April 2017. All three are registered at the same London E1 address and NINJA TUNE LIMITED is classified under SIC 90030, artistic creation. A fourth, NINJA TUNE PRODUCTION MUSIC LIMITED, number 11091592, was incorporated 1 December 2017 and dissolved 6 November 2018.
Which of those entities holds the copyright in The Return could not be established. A phonogram credit that reads “Ninja Tune” names a trading identity, not a company number, and no document fetched for this profile ties the recording to one of the three active registrations.
The releases carrying the Ninja Tune credit in this catalogue, The Return (barcodes 5054429138085 and 5054429138092, catalogue numbers ZENCD258 and ZENDNL258), the single “Final Form” (5054429137927, ZENDNLS516) and “Time’s Up (Remix)” (5054429144000), sit in the 5054429 GS1 barcode prefix. So does the 2017 Big Dada album Birds and the BEE9, at 5054429121131. The two imprints register their products through the same barcode prefix.