Sampa the Great owns the masters of Nu Zamrock. The album, out on 30 October 2026, is owned by Sampa The Great Pty Ltd, an Australian private company registered in Melbourne, and licensed exclusively to Loma Vista Recordings. The label does not own the recordings. It holds a licence over them.
That is not an inference. It is printed on the record. The phonographic copyright line delivered to the stores reads, word for word: “℗ 2026 Sampa The Great Pty Ltd., Under exclusive license to Loma Vista Recordings. A Concord Label Group Release.”
For Zambia that is worth stating plainly. The most internationally visible recording career to come out of the country in a generation now runs through a company bearing the artist’s name, not through a label balance sheet. And the album is built on Zamrock, the Zambian psychedelic rock movement of the 1970s, which makes the ownership question less of a technicality than usual.
What actually changed hands#
Nothing was sold. An exclusive licence is permission, not a transfer. The owner keeps the copyright and grants another party the right to exploit the recording for an agreed term and territory. When the term ends, the recording is still the owner’s.
Compare her earlier records. Her 2017 album Birds and the BEE9 reads “℗ 2017 Big Dada”. Her 2019 album The Return reads “℗ 2019 Ninja Tune”. Both lines are unqualified: no “under exclusive licence”, no mention of the artist or any company of hers. On their face, those are claims of ownership by the labels.
So ownership of her new recordings moved from the label side of the credit line to her side of it, somewhere between The Return in September 2019 and the single “Lane” in April 2022. Neither party announced it. No document this desk fetched explains it.
One caution. This is a change in who owns the new recordings. Nothing in the catalogue shows the 2017 and 2019 albums changing hands, and those credits still name Big Dada and Ninja Tune today. Anyone writing that Sampa the Great “got her masters back” would be going further than the evidence goes.
The four-year gap between the company and the credit#
The sharpest thing in the paperwork is a date.
SAMPA THE GREAT PTY LTD has been active on the Australian Business Register since 12 August 2017, under ABN 30 620 975 082 and ACN 620 975 082, with a main business location in central Melbourne. It registered for GST the same day.
The first release in her catalogue that names the company is “Lane”, dated 26 April 2022. That is a gap of four years and eight months.
Birds and the BEE9 came out on 10 November 2017, three months after the company was registered, and it was credited to Big Dada anyway. The vehicle existed. It simply was not the one holding the rights. Companies get set up for touring or services long before they ever hold a copyright, so 2022 changed what this one was used for, not when it came into being.
Big Dada, Ninja Tune, and what the barcodes give away#
The 2017 and 2019 credits name two different imprints. The barcodes say they were registered by the same party.
Birds and the BEE9 carries barcode 5054429121131 and catalogue number BDDNL287. The Return carries 5054429138085 and 5054429138092, catalogue numbers ZENCD258 and ZENDNL258. The single “Final Form” carries 5054429137927. Every one of them sits in the 5054429 prefix, and a shared barcode prefix identifies the company that registered the products.
That matters because of what the company register does not contain. There is no record label registered in the United Kingdom under the name Big Dada. The register turns up a production company that used the name BIG DADA LTD from July 2019 to February 2026, incorporated two years after the album, plus two dissolved Leeds food businesses. None is the label, and this desk does not connect them to it.
Big Dada is described as a Ninja Tune imprint in trade coverage and on its own site. Ninja Tune’s label page for it returned a 404 when fetched, so the corporate relationship is not asserted here on a primary document. The shared barcode prefix is the harder evidence.
Ninja Tune itself is on the register three times over: NINJA TUNE LIMITED (04770301, May 2003), NINJA TUNE RECORDS LTD (04926214, October 2003) and NINJA TUNE HOLDINGS LIMITED (10713956, April 2017), all active, all at the same London address. Which of the three holds the copyright in The Return cannot be established, because a credit line gives you a trading name, not a company number.
The one record she does not own#
There is an exception in the Loma Vista period, worth knowing before anyone generalises. The single “GOAT”, released on 19 September 2025, reads “℗ 2025 Universal Studios, under license to Loma Vista Recordings.”
On that recording the owner is a film studio. Loma Vista is again the licensee. Her company is not named at all. That is the structure you would expect for a screen commission, and a reminder that “the artist owns her masters” is a statement about specific recordings, never about a career.
What could not be established#
Two things, and both are reported rather than filled. The first is her publishing. Who owns or administers the songs on Nu Zamrock is unknown to this desk, and the reason is access, not absence. The ASCAP repertory returned a 403. APRA AMCOS, the obvious place to look given a Melbourne company, also returned a 403. The PRS for Music repertoire search returned a 404. The MLC public work search resolved only to its application shell and its data host was unreachable, as was the United States Copyright Office public records interface. No publisher is named on any release page read, and no publishing announcement naming her was located.
One trap there: the words “A Concord Label Group Release” say nothing about her songs. Concord runs a publishing arm, and this publication has reported on it signing Amaarae to a worldwide publishing deal while her masters stayed with her own company. A masters credit is not a publishing credit, and nothing fetched here links Concord to Sampa the Great’s compositions.
The second gap is the company itself. The Australian Business Register entry carries no officeholder or shareholding detail, and no paid extract was purchased. The name and the credit line read like an artist-owned vehicle, but no document read for this piece names a director or shareholder, and the desk is not asserting one.
The Zamrock catalogue is a separate rights question#
The album’s premise is inherited. Her own account, carried through the album campaign, is that her uncle George Kunda, known as Groovy Joe, was a founding member of WITCH, the Zambian band at the centre of 1970s Zamrock. No registry or company record read for this piece carries that family relationship, so it is reported as her statement, not as verified fact.
What the catalogue does show is that rights in the modern Zamrock revival sit with American independents, not Zambian companies. WITCH’s 2023 album Zango is credited “℗ 2023 Desert Daze Sound”. The 2024 single “JOY (Life Goes On)”, on which Sampa features, is credited “℗ 2024 Partisan Records”. Those are claims over those recordings only. Who owns the original 1970s masters is a different question this piece does not answer.
What this means for artists#
The lesson here is not “own your masters”. It is narrower and more practical.
The owner is the first name on the line. The licensee is the one after the words “under exclusive license to”. Where the label’s name appears alone and unqualified, as on her 2017 and 2019 albums, the label is claiming the copyright. Where your company comes first and the label follows a licence phrase, you are the licensor and they are your counterparty for a term.
A licence has an end date, and that end date is the whole asset. None of term, territory, royalty rate, advance or option count is disclosed on any of these releases, which is normal. The credit line tells you the structure and nothing about the economics. Two artists with identical-looking credit lines can be in completely different deals.
Incorporating is not the same as holding rights. Her company sat on the register for four years and eight months before a recording was ever credited to it. A company only owns a master if the master is actually assigned to it, or recorded under it from the start. Registering the entity is the cheap part.
Going label-owned to artist-owned usually happens quietly, between albums. There was no announcement here. This structure is only visible because the metadata is public. The same is true of Fatoumata Diawara, whose masters are owned by her own Paris company with the label holding a licence, and of CKay, whose recordings sit with his own company while AWAL licenses them. The artist-owned master licensed out to a major-backed label is now a standard shape for African artists with international reach, and almost none of it is announced.
Check your own credit line in more than one place. The registries do not always agree. Deezer carries “Simon Says” as a standalone single dated 10 September 2026 with one barcode, MusicBrainz carries it with another, and Apple no longer surfaces it as a separate product. None of it changes who owns the recording. But if you want to know what your stores tell the world about your rights, go and read it.
The full document chain, the chronology, the registry divergences and the things this desk could not establish are in the deal record for the Nu Zamrock licence.
No consideration was disclosed by any party. Sampa Tembo, Sampa The Great Pty Ltd, Loma Vista Recordings, Concord, Ninja Tune and Big Dada were not reached for comment. Every structure described here is ordinary and lawful, and no allegation of wrongdoing is made.
