Deal sheet
- Status
- Documented, unexplained. The change in the stated phonogram owner is documented and dated. Its cause is not. No party has stated what, if anything, changed hands, and the second label named on the registry document for the 2014 release of Ayo, Starboy Entertainment Limited, has been dissolved since 16 June 2026 with no restoration and no subsequent Gazette notice as at 12 November 2026.
- Type
- Licensing
- Parties
- Starboy Entertainment Limited
- Amount
- Not disclosed Not disclosed, and it is not established that any consideration existed. No party has announced a transaction covering these two albums. No price, advance, royalty rate or equity figure appears in any document read for this record, and this desk publishes none.
- Rights covered
- WHAT THIS RECORD DOCUMENTS: a change in the stated phonogram owner of two sound recordings, and a divergence between two registries about who the labels on one of them were.
THE RECORDINGS. Superstar, Wizkid's debut studio album, 17 tracks. Ayo, his second studio album, 19 tracks.
THE CREDIT NOW LIVE. Read on 12 November 2026 in the United States Apple Music storefront, both albums carry the identical phonogram line "P 2022 Empire Mates Entertainment Ltd." Superstar sits at Apple collection identifier 1627794779 with an Apple-listed release date of 12 June 2011. Ayo sits at collection identifier 1627800102 with an Apple-listed release date of 17 September 2017. The same credit was returned by the iTunes Lookup API and found by direct regular-expression search over the live album pages, so it is the album-level credit and not a sidebar artefact. Deezer independently carries Ayo at album 319781177 with the label field "Empire Mates Entertainment Ltd.", a release date of 17 September 2017 and the Universal Product Code 765855510950. No Deezer album record for Superstar was located.
WHAT THE RIGHTS REGISTRY SAYS INSTEAD. The MusicBrainz release document for Ayo, release MBID 1abbdd24-9b49-413b-892b-c3401afd0b5e, carries a date of 17 September 2014, country XW, barcode 888174872544 and status Official, and its label-info block names TWO labels, not one: Empire Mates Entertainment and Starboy Entertainment Ltd. The release now selling on Apple Music and Deezer names Empire Mates Entertainment alone. The registry entry for Superstar, MBID c2c8334c-a106-4479-b51d-d7c484f1e5e8, dated 1 July 2011, country XW, barcode 700261889917, names Empire Mates Entertainment only, with no second label. A further Superstar release, MBID 8500f29c-866b-4c96-b24c-eaf4c9b6c6b2, dated 12 June 2012, also names Empire Mates Entertainment only.
THE PRODUCT IDENTIFIERS DO NOT MATCH. The registry's 2014 Ayo carries barcode 888174872544. The edition now on Deezer carries UPC 765855510950. Different identifiers mean a different released product, which is consistent with a fresh delivery rather than an edit to an existing one.
WHEN THE RE-DELIVERED EDITIONS APPEARED. Internet Archive CDX records for the exact Apple album URLs show the Ayo page at collection 1627800102 first captured at HTTP 200 on 9 June 2022, and the Superstar page at collection 1627794779 first captured at HTTP 200 on 12 June 2022. The 12 June 2022 capture of the Superstar page already contains the string "P 2022 Empire Mates Entertainment Ltd.", and that string is still present in the capture of 17 August 2022. So the Empire Mates credit has been continuously documented from the first archived day of the current Apple entries to the live read of 12 November 2026.
THE OTHER COMPANY ON THE REGISTRY ENTRY IS DISSOLVED. Starboy Entertainment Limited, the second label named on the registry's 2014 Ayo document, is United Kingdom company 10075091. Read on 12 November 2026, Companies House gives its status as Dissolved, dissolved on 16 June 2026, incorporated 21 March 2016, registered office 1st Floor, 104 Oxford Street, London W1D 1LP, SIC 90030 artistic creation, last accounts made up to 31 March 2024 and last confirmation statement dated 19 February 2025. The filing history records no restoration. The Gazette, the official public record in which a restoration or a disclaimer of company property would have to be published, returns 28 notices for the phrase "Starboy Entertainment", and the most recent of them is dated 16 June 2026, the dissolution itself. Nothing has been gazetted about the company since.
WHAT IS NOT CLAIMED. No assignment, licence or distribution agreement for either album was obtained. Nothing here establishes who owns the copyright in these recordings. A phonogram credit and a label field are supplier-declared metadata: evidence of what a rights supplier instructed a store to display, on a date that can be documented, and nothing more.
- Territory
- Not established as a matter of grant. Both albums were read in the United States Apple Music storefront and the credit is identical there; the Deezer record for Ayo is the global catalogue entry. The MusicBrainz documents for both albums give country XW, the code for a worldwide release, which describes the scope of the original release event rather than the territory of any rights grant.
The corporate facts are United Kingdom. Starboy Entertainment Limited is on the register of England and Wales. Empire Mates Entertainment Ltd. could not be resolved to any company register: a Companies House search for "empire mates" returned no company of that or any similar name, and Nigeria's Corporate Affairs Commission publishes no searchable API, so the legal personality behind the name on the credit line is not established by this record.
- Announced
- 2022-06-09
- Primary document
- Rights registry
- Sources
- MusicBrainz release lookup for Wizkid's album Ayo, release MBID 1abbdd24-9b49-413b-892b-c3401afd0b5e, read 12 November 2026: date 17 September 2014, country XW, barcode 888174872544, status Official. The label-info block names two labels, Empire Mates Entertainment and Starboy Entertainment Ltd. The edition now live on Apple Music and Deezer names Empire Mates Entertainment alone. · MusicBrainz release lookup for Wizkid's album Superstar, read 12 November 2026: date 1 July 2011, country XW, barcode 700261889917, status Official, one label named, Empire Mates Entertainment · Apple iTunes Lookup API, read 12 November 2026: collection 1627794779 Superstar, 17 tracks, Apple release date 12 June 2011, copyright "P 2022 Empire Mates Entertainment Ltd."; collection 1627800102 Ayo, 19 tracks, Apple release date 17 September 2017, same copyright string · Deezer album record for Ayo, read 12 November 2026: label field "Empire Mates Entertainment Ltd.", release date 17 September 2017, 19 tracks, UPC 765855510950 · Internet Archive CDX index for the exact Apple album URL, read 12 November 2026: first capture at HTTP 200 on 12 June 2022, timestamp 20220612093529; that capture's HTML carries "P 2022 Empire Mates Entertainment Ltd.", as does the capture of 17 August 2022 · Internet Archive CDX index for the exact Apple album URL, read 12 November 2026: first capture at HTTP 200 on 9 June 2022, timestamp 20220609223615 · Companies House overview for Starboy Entertainment Limited, company 10075091, read 12 November 2026: status Dissolved, dissolved on 16 June 2026, incorporated 21 March 2016, SIC 90030 artistic creation, registered office 1st Floor 104 Oxford Street London W1D 1LP, last accounts to 31 March 2024, last confirmation statement dated 19 February 2025, no restoration in the filing history · The Gazette official notices search for the phrase "Starboy Entertainment", read 12 November 2026: 28 notices, the most recent dated 16 June 2026, London Gazette Supplement 900982 page 4986. No notice of any kind after the dissolution date
Read this before citing: WHAT COULD NOT BE ESTABLISHED, STATED PLAINLY:
(1) NO PARTY HAS ANNOUNCED ANYTHING. Neither Wizkid, nor anyone speaking for Empire Mates Entertainment, nor Starboy Entertainment Limited, nor RCA Records or Sony Music has published a statement about these two albums, their re-delivery in June 2022, or who owns the recordings. This record is built entirely from store metadata, a rights registry, a web archive and the United Kingdom company register. There is no announcement to quote because no announcement was found.
(2) NO CONSIDERATION, AND NO EVIDENCE THAT MONEY MOVED. This desk publishes no figure. It is not established that any transaction occurred at all. A phonogram year can be reset and a catalogue re-delivered for reasons that involve no change of ownership whatsoever, including a change of distributor, a remaster, or an administrative re-ingestion.
(3) THE LEGAL IDENTITY OF EMPIRE MATES ENTERTAINMENT LTD. IS NOT ESTABLISHED. See the territory field. The suffix "Ltd." appears on the credit line, but no company register entry was located for it.
(4) THE REGISTRY DIVERGENCE HAS MORE THAN ONE INNOCENT EXPLANATION. MusicBrainz is community-maintained. Its 2014 Ayo document may record the labels printed on a physical or original digital edition that genuinely differed from the current one, or it may be incomplete or wrong. It is cited here as a registry record of what the 2014 release stated, not as proof of title. The finding is the divergence, which is reported as a divergence.
(5) THE DATES IN THE STORES DO NOT MATCH THE REGISTRY. Apple and Deezer both give Ayo a release date of 17 September 2017. MusicBrainz gives 17 September 2014, three years earlier to the day. The two stores agree with each other and disagree with the registry. This record does not resolve which date is correct for the original release; it reports that the live store entries carry a date three years later than the registry document for the same album title and track count.
(6) WHAT HAPPENED TO ANY COPYRIGHT HELD BY STARBOY ENTERTAINMENT LIMITED ON 16 JUNE 2026 IS STILL NOT ESTABLISHED. Section 1012 of the Companies Act 2006 provides that property held by a dissolved company passes to the Crown as bona vacantia, subject to possible restoration. That is stated here as general law and not as a finding about this company. No Gazette notice and no Companies House filing after 16 June 2026 was located for company 10075091. This record confirms, as at 12 November 2026, that the open question flagged in deal records 2484 and 7060 remains open, and it adds the official-notices check that those records did not run.
(7) A NEGATIVE WORTH STATING. Across the 160 album-level entries in Wizkid's Apple catalogue read on 12 November 2026, no release dated after the 16 June 2026 dissolution credits Starboy Entertainment Limited. The three entries dated 2 July 2026 are guest appearances credited to FAMM, to Sony Music Entertainment US Latin LLC and Head Concussion Records Inc., and to 777 Records BV and Top Notch Music BV. Absence of a credit is not evidence of a transfer, and it is recorded here as absence.
RELATIONSHIP TO EXISTING RECORDS. This record does not restate deal records 2484 and 7060, which cover the Starboy Entertainment Limited corporate trail and the 2017 RCA licence. It covers the part of the catalogue those records expressly did not reach: the two albums that predate the RCA relationship.
