CashTime Life’s 23-Record Catalogue Carries Its Own Phonogram Claim on Apple and Deezer. Both Stores’ Product Numbers Put the Delivery After 2021, Years After the Label Stopped Operating

Deal sheet

Status

Documented by store metadata only. No party (CashTime Life, K.O, Kid X, MA-E, Maggz, Moozlie, DJ Vigilante, Sony Music Entertainment Africa (Pty) Ltd, or any distributor) has stated who controls this catalogue, who delivered it to either store, or under what agreement. One release in the set is subject to an unresolved conflict between the two services over who claims it: see the caveat.

Parties

CashTime Life, Sony Music Entertainment Africa (Pty) Ltd

Amount

N/A Not disclosed, and no transaction has been identified. This record documents a phonogram claim and a delivery window read from store metadata. It does not document an announced acquisition, assignment, licence or distribution agreement, because no party has announced one. No price, advance, royalty rate or equity figure has been published for anything described here.

Rights covered

Sound recording (phonogram) credit only, as printed on commercial release metadata at Apple Music and Deezer. No publishing or songwriting right is covered by this record and none was examined.

What the documents state verbatim: 23 releases billed to K.O, Kid X, MA-E, Maggz, Moozlie and DJ Vigilante carry the Apple phonogram line "(P) [year] CashTime Life", with no licensee, no licensor and no distributor named. 19 of the 23 carry phonogram year 2019. The same 23 titles appear on Deezer under the label field "CashTimeLife", matched product for product with no extra title on either side.

A phonogram line records who claims copyright in a recording. It does not record who owns the company named, who distributes the product, who administers the publishing, or who delivered the product to the store. This record does not convert the credit into any of those four things.

Territory

Not established. No contractual territory is stated in any document obtained, because no contract was obtained. The catalogue was read from the South African storefronts of both services (country=za on Apple's lookup endpoint). No document reviewed states a territory, a term, an expiry or a renewal for any right in this catalogue.

Announced

Never announced. No party has issued any statement about how or when the CashTime Life catalogue was delivered to Apple Music or Deezer, or about who controls it now.

The stated release date on 18 of the 23 Apple products, and on 20 of the 23 Deezer products, is 12 July 2019. Both stores' own product identifiers place the delivery later: the Apple block runs 1638166009 to 1638605140 and the Deezer block runs 343258107 to 344146607, and in both cases the block sits numerically above records issued in 2021 and below records issued in late 2022. See the caveat for the bracketing records and for the limits of that inference.

Primary document

Rights registry

Sources

Apple Music catalogue metadata for the 23 CashTime Life-credited releases, returned in a single payload by the iTunes Lookup API (resultCount 23), South African storefront, read directly on 2 November 2026. Phonogram years in the payload: 2014 on two records, 2015 on one, 2016 on one, 2019 on nineteen. Apple release dates in the payload: 1 January 2014 on two, 1 January 2015 on one, 1 January 2016 on one, 9 September 2016 on one, 12 July 2019 on eighteen. · Deezer product record for K.O's "Skhanda Republic", label field "CashTimeLife", stated release date 2019-07-12. Apple's record for the same album (collection 1638187533) states 2014-01-01. The two services disagree about the release date of this album by five years and six months. · Deezer product record for DJ Vigilante's "Ayeye", label field "CashTimeLife", stated release date 2019-07-12. Apple's record for the same single (collection 1638185838) states 2016-09-09 while carrying phonogram year 2019: a 2019 copyright claim on a record Apple dates to 2016. · Apple album page for Kid X's "Mfazi Wephepha", released 17 March 2017, phonogram line "(P) 2017 South Africa – Sony Music Entertainment Africa (Pty) Ltd, under exclusive licence from Bonginkosi Mahlangu". Names Sony's South African company as licensee and the artist personally as licensor. Does not name CashTime Life. · Deezer product record for the same "Mfazi Wephepha" release, label field "Cashtime Life" spelled as two words, the only such spelling among the 24 CashTime-labelled products located on Deezer. Its Deezer identifier, 15658652, sits alongside genuine 2016 and 2017 deliveries rather than in the 343-million block. The two services therefore name different copyright claimants for this one recording, and this desk does not resolve which is correct. · Apple album page for Kid X's "Father of Zen", released 1 October 2021, collection identifier 1582968963. Lower bracket for the Apple delivery window: the entire CashTime block is numerically above it. · Apple album page for Kid X's "Laundry Day Fresh", 7 October 2016, the first release after his CashTime departure, phonogram line "(P) 2016 South Africa – Sony Music Entertainment Africa (Pty) Ltd, under exclusive licence from Bonginkosi Mahlangu". Establishes that the Sony licence wording predates "Mfazi Wephepha" rather than beginning with it. · Deezer product dated 4 June 2021, identifier 232885362. Lower bracket for the Deezer delivery window. · Deezer product dated 18 November 2022, identifier 375391337. Upper bracket for the Deezer delivery window: the entire CashTime block is numerically below it. · Interview published 2 September 2016, fetched and read directly, in which Kid X confirms leaving CashTime Life and gives as his reason that the two sides had "stopped seeing eye to eye". It says nothing about master ownership, contract terms or a destination label, and carries no statement from K.O or from the label. · Continental music directory profile, fetched and read directly: gives the artist's birth name as "born Bonginkosi Mahlangu", the name that appears as licensor on Apple's phonogram line for his 2016 to 2021 releases. It names CashTime and Rap Lyf and does not mention Sony, distribution or ownership of recordings. · MusicBrainz label registry search for "CashTime": exactly one result, "Cashtime Life", with no country recorded. MusicBrainz is community-edited and is cited here only to record that the registry holds no detail on this label. · The label's former domain, checked 2 November 2026: resolves HTTP 200 to a Chinese-language application download page titled "178通用版app下载-手机App下载". The address has been repurposed by an unrelated party, so it is not evidence of any current label activity and cannot be used to contact the company.

Read this before citing: THIS IS NOT A RECORD OF A DISCLOSED TRANSACTION. No acquisition, master purchase, catalogue sale, assignment, licence or distribution agreement is claimed here, and none is evidenced. No party has announced anything about the CashTime Life catalogue since the label stopped operating. What is established is narrower and entirely documentary: what the two largest stores selling this catalogue say about who claims it, and where their two accounts diverge.

ESTABLISHED, FROM STORE METADATA. Twenty-three releases billed to six CashTime Fam artists (K.O, Kid X, MA-E, Maggz, Moozlie and DJ Vigilante) carry an Apple phonogram line naming CashTime Life alone, with no licensee, licensor or distributor named. Nineteen of the twenty-three carry phonogram year 2019. The same twenty-three titles appear on Deezer under the label field "CashTimeLife", and the two sets match product for product with no extra title on either side, which was checked by normalised title comparison in both directions. On Apple the twenty-three collection identifiers run from 1638166009 to 1638605140 with no unrelated product interleaved; on Deezer they run from 343258107 to 344146607.

ESTABLISHED: A DATE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE TWO STORES. Deezer dates twenty of the twenty-three to 12 July 2019. Apple dates eighteen to 12 July 2019. The two records that differ are "Skhanda Republic", which Apple dates 1 January 2014 and Deezer dates 12 July 2019, and "Ayeye", which Apple dates 9 September 2016 and Deezer dates 12 July 2019. Four records keep their original phonogram years on both services: "Caracara" and "Skhanda Republic" at 2014, "3 Quarter Pace" at 2015 and "Township Counsellor" at 2016.

INFERRED, NOT DOCUMENTED: THE DELIVERY WINDOW. Both stores issue product identifiers in rough sequence as catalogue is loaded, which makes the identifier a crude clock. On Apple the CashTime block sits above collection 1582968963, a Kid X album released 1 October 2021, and below collection 1654488865, a Kwesta album released 2 December 2022. On Deezer the block sits above product 232885362, dated 4 June 2021, and below products 375391337 and 375391407, dated 18 November 2022. Two stores with unrelated numbering schemes therefore bracket the same window, roughly mid-2021 to late 2022, which cannot be reconciled with the 12 July 2019 date the metadata states. This is an inference from observed identifier ordering. Neither Apple nor Deezer publishes its allocation scheme, neither has confirmed a delivery date, and identifier ordering tracks when a product record was created rather than who created it. It is reported here as a consistent cross-dataset inference, not as a documented delivery date.

NOT ESTABLISHED: WHO DELIVERED IT, AND WHO CONTROLS IT NOW. No party has stated who delivered this catalogue to either store, who collects the revenue, or whether CashTime Life's rights were assigned, licensed, or left in place while a third party handled delivery. Those are four materially different legal positions and a phonogram line distinguishes none of them. What was checked: CashTime Life operates no live website and its former domain has been repurposed by an unrelated party; the MusicBrainz label registry holds one bare entry with no country; South Africa's Companies and Intellectual Property Commission publishes no free company search this desk could query, so the company's current registration status is unresolved; a full-text search of United States securities filings returned no relevant document, which is expected because none of the parties is a registrant. The identifier blocks establish that a delivery happened in a window, not who performed it. This record does not name a deliverer and does not guess at one.

NOT ESTABLISHED: WHETHER THE 2019 PHONOGRAM YEAR WAS ENTERED WITH AUTHORITY. Nineteen records assert copyright in CashTime Life's name for 2019, which falls after the period in which the label is publicly described as having wound down. Whoever entered that claim has not been identified and has not explained it. This record states that the claim exists and that it post-dates the label's described operating life. It does not allege that the claim is false, invalid or improperly made, and it does not allege wrongdoing by any named person or company.

AN UNRESOLVED CROSS-SERVICE CONFLICT ON ONE RECORDING. Kid X's single "Mfazi Wephepha", released 17 March 2017, is the only record in this story whose claimed ownership is in active conflict. Apple's phonogram line reads "(P) 2017 South Africa – Sony Music Entertainment Africa (Pty) Ltd, under exclusive licence from Bonginkosi Mahlangu", naming Sony's South African company as exclusive licensee and the artist personally as licensor. Deezer's label field for the same release reads "Cashtime Life". Those are not two descriptions of one arrangement: they name different copyright claimants. Three further facts bear on it and none resolves it. Kid X confirmed leaving CashTime Life in an interview published 2 September 2016, six months before the release. His first post-departure single, "Laundry Day Fresh" (7 October 2016), already carried the Sony-and-Mahlangu wording, so that wording did not begin with "Mfazi Wephepha". And the Deezer identifier for "Mfazi Wephepha", 15658652, sits with genuine 2016 and 2017 deliveries rather than in the 343-million catalogue block, and its label field is the only one of the twenty-four to spell the name "Cashtime Life" as two words, so it was not part of the bulk delivery. This desk does not resolve which claimant is correct and has not obtained a statement from either.

THE SONY DISTRIBUTION QUESTION IS CHECKED AND NOT RESOLVED. CashTime Life is widely described as having released and distributed through Sony Music Africa while active. No CashTime-era phonogram line on either store names Sony. That absence is expressly not treated here as a refutation: a distributor routinely does not appear on a phonogram line at all, because the line records a copyright claim and not a service relationship. The accurate statement is that the credit lines cannot be used to confirm or deny a Sony distribution arrangement for the CashTime period, and that no agreement naming one was located. This desk's directory record for the label also states that the catalogue "later returned to streaming through separate distribution arrangements" without naming an agreement; that wording is not evidence of one and is not relied on here.

WHAT THIS RECORD DOES NOT CLAIM. It does not claim CashTime Life sold, assigned or licensed its catalogue to anyone. It does not claim Sony Music Entertainment Africa (Pty) Ltd acquired, distributes or administers any CashTime Life recording. It does not claim any named artist does or does not own their masters. It does not state a deal value, because none exists to state. It does not cover publishing or songwriting rights in any of these recordings, which were not examined.