On 12 November 2024, a signing announcement went out stating that Bad Habit/Atlantic Records had signed the Nigerian singer FAVE, timed to the release of her EP “Dutty Love”. It carried quotes from three named executives. Across her complete catalogue on two independent registries, 42 entries on one and 35 on the other, read in full on 10 October 2026, the words “Atlantic” and “Bad Habit” appear exactly zero times on any rightsholder credit. What does appear, on twelve releases and only those twelve, is Atlantic Recording Corporation’s own barcode prefix, sitting above a credit line with no company name in it at all.
That finding is narrower than it sounds. Nothing read for this piece establishes who owns FAVE’s masters. It is a story about what a major-label signing looks like on the public record when nobody writes it down, and how much you can still recover from a barcode when the credit line is blank.
What the announcement said, and what it left out#
The announcement is specific about enthusiasm and silent about structure. Bad Habit co-founders Kirk Harding and Matthew “Baus” Adesuyan called FAVE “a force of nature whose talent is limitless”. Lanre Gaba, President of Hip-Hop, R&B and Global at Atlantic Records, called her “the kind of artist that excites us about the future of global music”. It names Tumblar as her management team, not as a label, a distinction worth holding on to because Tumblar is also the name printed on her earlier records as rightsholder.
Read in full, it contains no reference to masters, publishing, ownership, territory or term, and no figure of any kind. That is not unusual for a signing release. It does mean the only public description of this deal describes nothing about the deal.
The credit line, release by release#
FAVE is credited on her earliest records under her legal name, Chidozie Godsfavour Ugochinyere. Her phonogram line, the part of a release stating who holds the sound-recording right, has moved six times since 2019.
It opens with “1660386 Records DK” on two singles in 2019 and 2020, a DistroKid placeholder naming no label. Then “Chidozie Godsfavour Ugochinyere, Under exclusive license to The Plug Entertainment” on “N.B.U” in April 2020, putting the artist herself in the owner position and the other party as licensee. Then “Tumblar” alone on “Beautifully” in May 2021. Then, from “Baby Riddim” in September 2021 through “Scatta Scatta” in October 2022, “TUMBLAR under exclusive license to emPawa Africa Limited”, a licence out of her own imprint rather than a sale of it.
Then, from 24 January 2024 to 17 July 2025, across seven distinct releases and twelve catalogue entries including both pressings of “Dutty Love”, the field goes empty. It reads “℗ 2024” or “℗ 2025” on one registry, “P2024” or “P2025” on the other. A year, and no company.
Then, from 23 November 2025, “Riddim Baby LTD”, and from June 2026 the fuller “Riddim Baby Ltd with Exclusive License to ONErpm” on the single “Dance” and the “RnBling” EP, whose six tracks include features from Chike and Yemi Alade.
The barcode names what the credit does not#
Every commercial release carries a UPC, and a UPC opens with the company prefix issued to whoever registered it. On all twelve blank-credit entries, that prefix is 075679.
That prefix belongs to Atlantic Recording Corporation, shown by reading unrelated releases that print the barcode and label name together: Bruno Mars, “24K Magic”, 075679904126, “Atlantic Records”; Charli xcx, “BRAT”, 075679666130, “Atlantic Records”; Cardi B, “Invasion of Privacy”, 075679873682, “Atlantic/KSR”; Lizzo, “Special”, 075679748898, “Nice Life/Atlantic”.
The correlation on FAVE’s catalogue is exact in both directions, with no exceptions in either dataset. Every release of hers with a blank rightsholder credit carries the Atlantic prefix. Every release carrying the Atlantic prefix has a blank rightsholder credit. Before January 2024 there is no 075679 anywhere in her catalogue, and after July 2025 there is none either.
Burna Boy is the control case#
The obvious objection is that a blank credit is simply how this pipeline works. It is not. Burna Boy records through the same Bad Habit and Atlantic joint venture, first struck in 2018 and extended in 2023, and his releases carry the same 075679 prefix with the parties spelled out. “African Giant”, 075679849304, is labelled “Spaceship/ Bad Habit/Atlantic Records”, as are “Twice As Tall”, “Love, Damini”, “I Told Them…” and “No Sign of Weakness”. “Outside”, “Gbona” and “On the Low” name Bad Habit and Atlantic too.
Bad Habit and Atlantic do take named credit when they take credit. On FAVE’s twelve releases carrying their barcode, that field is empty. Why has not been established, and no party has explained it. A metadata omission at delivery is as consistent with the evidence as a deliberate choice, and this desk cannot tell you which it was.
The dates do not line up with the announcement#
The first FAVE release carrying Atlantic’s prefix is “Belong to You”, dated 24 January 2024, roughly nine and a half months before the announcement. Whatever began between these parties was already producing Atlantic-registered releases well before it was announced.
The last is “Intentions”, 17 July 2025. Four months later, on 23 November 2025, the same song reappears as “Intentions (feat. Urban Chords)” on a different barcode prefix, credited to “Riddim Baby LTD”. The clearest marker of the change is a single song reissued under a new owner credit. Trade press reporting published on 17 September 2026 states that she previously signed to Atlantic Records before going independent, saying she wanted more investment in marketing her music rather than simply financial backing.
Owns, administers, distributes, licenses#
These four words are not interchangeable, and most confusion about African record deals comes from treating them as though they were. “Tumblar under exclusive license to emPawa Africa Limited” means Tumblar held the recording right and emPawa had the exclusive right to exploit it for a term. emPawa did not own it. “Riddim Baby Ltd with Exclusive License to ONErpm” is the same shape today, with ONErpm as licensee and distributor, not owner. An exclusive licence normally reverts when its term ends. A sale does not revert at all.
A blank credit line asserts none of this. It is the absence of a claim, not a claim of absence, and it is why this piece cannot tell you whether Atlantic or Bad Habit ever held a right in these recordings.
What this means for artists#
Your barcode is a public record even when your credit line is not. If your releases carry a major’s company prefix, the registration of those releases ran through that major, and anyone can read that off a UPC in seconds. You cannot hide a distribution relationship by leaving the label field empty, and you should not assume the blank field protects you either way.
Ask what your deal will make your credit say. Two artists can sign structurally similar deals and end up with completely different public records. Before signing, ask exactly what the phonogram line on your next release will read, and whether your own imprint stays in the owner position. That sentence travels with the recording for as long as it exists.
An imprint holding your masters need not be a registered company, and that cuts both ways. No company called Riddim Baby or Riddim Baby Ltd exists on the UK register, and neither does Tumblar, yet both have been printed as rightsholder on commercial releases. The “Ltd” on a credit line is typed by whoever supplied the metadata. If the entity holding your masters is not registered anywhere, establish who owns it on paper before you need to prove it.
The route out is well travelled and looks the same each time. Joeboy’s early records were licensed to emPawa; his 2024 single “Osadebe” reads “Young Legend LTD exclusively licenced to Warner Music Africa”, his own imprint in the owner position with a major as licensee. J.Derobie’s “Poverty” was licensed to emPawa in his legal name, Derick Obuobie Junior; by 2026 his releases read “Turf Way Records”. FAVE’s current credits follow the same pattern. Artists who move from licensing recordings to an administrator towards holding them in a named imprint of their own end up with a stronger credit line, and it is visible on the product.
Limits of this record#
Whether Atlantic Records or Bad Habit ever held any right in FAVE’s recordings is not established here, in either direction. A major can fund marketing, A&R and touring without any change to a printed credit, and an artist can keep her masters while a label distributes them. No allegation of non-payment or wrongdoing is made or supported: this desk has no evidence of what was paid, advanced or recouped privately, only of what is and is not printed publicly.
Whether Riddim Baby or Tumblar is registered outside the United Kingdom could not be established. Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission exposes no public search endpoint to this desk and was not checked, so a Nigerian registration can neither be confirmed nor excluded. Publishing is not addressed: no publisher, administrator or society registration for FAVE’s songwriting share was located, and the recording side is the only right discussed here. On two releases led by other artists on which she features, the registries disagree with each other, and no claim about her own rights rests on either. Separately, the credit “emPawa Africa Limited” kept appearing on her releases through October 2022, roughly eleven months after that stopped being the company’s legal name: Companies House records company 12412587 as EMPAWA AFRICA MUSIC SERVICES LIMITED, with the previous name held from 20 January 2020 to 10 November 2021. Stale label strings are commonplace, and this is a drift between register and product, not an accusation.
Atlantic Records, Bad Habit, emPawa Africa, ONErpm, Tumblar and FAVE were not reached for comment, and no official Atlantic or Warner Music Group newsroom item naming FAVE was located. Everything above was read on 10 October 2026: her full Apple catalogue plus a track-level lookup for “RnBling”, the Deezer album API for all 35 releases with individual label and barcode fetches, comparison barcodes for unrelated Atlantic and Burna Boy releases, catalogue credits for Joeboy and J.Derobie, three Companies House pages, the signing announcement, and the September 2026 independence report.
