Deal sheet
- Status
- Documented, structurally consistent, legally unresolved. The divergence between the registry's label field and the retailer's phonogram line is documented release by release, across seven years and two solo labels' worth of catalogue (Capitol Music France, then briefly jointly with Amaterasu, then Amaterasu alone). What legal relationship this reflects, an exclusive licence from Amaterasu Prod to a Universal imprint, a distribution agreement, or something else, is not stated in any document read for this record. No licence, distribution or recording agreement between Dadju, Amaterasu Prod and any Universal entity was obtained.
- Type
- Distribution
- Parties
- Amaterasu Prod, Universal Music Group
- Amount
- Not disclosed Not disclosed, and it is not established that any consideration is documented. No licence fee, advance, royalty rate or equity figure appears in any source read for this record.
- Rights covered
- WHAT THIS RECORD DOCUMENTS: a consistent divergence, across three solo studio albums and a joint album spanning 2017 to 2024, between the record label named on the rights registry for Dadju's releases and the company named on the phonogram (recording copyright) line of the same releases as sold.
THE REGISTRY CREDIT. MusicBrainz's release document for Dadju's debut solo album, "Gentleman 2.0" (MBID 22c6c2ab-89e2-4c8f-a1c7-30dc5bb0c94a, date 24 November 2017, barcode 00602567165170), names one label: Capitol Music France, a Universal Music Group imprint (Qobuz's retail metadata separately describes the imprint as "Universal Music Division Capitol Music France"). MusicBrainz's registry entries for his second solo album, "Poison ou Antidote," split across releases between Capitol Music France, Polydor and Universal Music France, and the registry entry for his third solo album, "Cullinan" (12 May 2022), again names Capitol Music France.
THE PHONOGRAM LINE INSTEAD. Apple's iTunes Search API, read for every Dadju album and single returned under country=FR, carries a different name on nearly every one of his own lead-artist releases: "Amaterasu" or "Amaterasu Prod." Confirmed product-level: Christina single (P 2018 Amaterasu), Poison, lead single of his second album (P 2019 Amaterasu Prod), the Poison ou Antidote album across its 2019-2021 editions (P 2019/2020/2021 Amaterasu Prod), Grand bain featuring Ninho (P 2020 Amaterasu Prod), Cullinan, his third solo album (P 2022 Amaterasu Prod). The sole partial exception across this catalogue is the single "Cullinan: Gelee Royale (Partie 1)," released 11 November 2022, which carries a joint credit, "P 2022 Amaterasu / Capitol Music France." Four months later, the follow-up EP "Cullinan: Gelee Royale (Partie 2)" (17 March 2023) reverts to "P 2023 Amaterasu" alone. No Universal company name was found alone, as the sole credit, on any Dadju lead-artist release checked.
THE JOINT ALBUM CARRIES NO UNIVERSAL CREDIT AT ALL. "Heritage," Dadju's February 2024 joint album with Tayc, and its associated singles ("I love you," "Makila: Wable"), carry the phonogram line "P 2024 Amaterasu Prod / Good Mood Publishing / H24." MusicBrainz's label-info field for the same release names Play Two, the French label associated with Tayc, not Capitol Music France, Polydor or Universal Music France.
WHO AMATERASU PROD IS. Amaterasu Prod is a French SAS, SIREN 829649235, registered with France's official companies gazette, BODACC, on 16 May 2017, with activity recorded as starting 29 April 2017: six months before "Gentleman 2.0" carried the Capitol Music France credit on its registry entry. The same BODACC filing names Dadju Nsungula, Dadju's legal name, as the company's president. A second BODACC filing, published 5 December 2024, records the nomination of Sania Ramdane as directeur general. See the linked afw_company record, Amaterasu Prod, for the full filing detail.
- Territory
- Not established as a matter of any rights grant. Apple's iTunes Search API was queried against the France storefront (country=FR), which is where Dadju's catalogue is primarily marketed, and MusicBrainz's release documents for the same albums carry no consistent country code across editions. No distribution agreement, publishing contract or any other grant document was obtained, so the geographic scope of whatever arrangement exists between Amaterasu Prod and Universal's French imprints is not established by this record; only the storefront on which the credits were read is.
- Announced
- 2017-11-24
- Primary document
- Regulatory filing
- Sources
- BODACC (France's official companies gazette), company-filings search for Amaterasu Prod, SIREN 829649235 · BODACC immatriculation notice for Amaterasu Prod, published 1 September 2019, recording the 16 May 2017 RCS Paris registration and Dadju Nsungula as president · MusicBrainz release lookup, Gentleman 2.0, read 13 November 2026: date 2017-11-24, barcode 00602567165170, label Capitol Music France · MusicBrainz full release list for artist Dadju (MBID ecca82a9-0b5f-4b01-86aa-6b9fe62b09fe), read 13 November 2026: 61 releases, label-info checked across the catalogue · Apple iTunes Search API, France storefront, read 13 November 2026: copyright field checked across returned Dadju album and EP entries · societe.com company extract for Amaterasu Prod, SIREN 829649235, cross-checked against the BODACC filing
Read this before citing: WHAT COULD NOT BE ESTABLISHED, STATED PLAINLY:
(1) THIS RECORD DOES NOT ESTABLISH THAT UNIVERSAL DOES NOT OWN OR CONTROL THESE RECORDINGS. A phonogram credit naming Amaterasu Prod is evidence of what metadata a rights supplier instructed Apple to display, not a copyright register. It is common industry practice for an artist's own furnishing company to be named on the P line of a release that is nonetheless subject to an exclusive licence, a distribution deal or other arrangement with a major that the public credit line does not fully describe. This record reports the documented metadata pattern. It does not assert that Universal has no rights in these recordings.
(2) NO CONTRACT WAS OBTAINED. No licence agreement, distribution agreement or recording agreement between Dadju, Amaterasu Prod, Capitol Music France, Polydor or Universal Music France was read. The nature of the relationship, licence, distribution, or something else, is not established.
(3) NO CONSIDERATION IS DOCUMENTED. No figure for any advance, royalty rate, licence fee or equity appears in any source checked. This desk publishes no amount.
(4) THE REGISTRIES DO NOT FULLY AGREE WITH EACH OTHER. MusicBrainz's own entries for "Poison ou Antidote" name Capitol Music France on one release document and Polydor on another, for releases dated identically. This record reports that divergence; it does not resolve it.
(5) LATER, COLLABORATIVE CREDITS ARE NOT CHARACTERISED HERE. Dadju's 2025 and 2026 output includes features and co-billed singles, including one, "J'ai ce qu'il faut," credited on iTunes to neither Amaterasu nor a Universal company, and one, "Superwoman," that MusicBrainz credits primarily to Angelique Kidjo with Dadju as a secondary artist on a Parlophone/Warner Music France credit. Because artist-credit order on these more recent, collaborative releases is less clear-cut than on his three solo albums, this record confines its claim to the solo catalogue and the Heritage joint album, and does not characterise what, if anything, these later releases show about Dadju's own arrangement with Amaterasu Prod or Universal.
Every album Dadju has released since his 2017 debut has carried a Universal Music Group imprint on the rights registry entry for that release: Capitol Music France, then briefly Capitol Music France alongside Polydor, then Capitol Music France again. But on the recording-copyright line of the same releases as sold at retail, the company named is almost never Universal. It is Amaterasu Prod, a small French company registered six months before his first album came out, with Dadju himself as president.
This record documents that divergence across three solo studio albums and one joint album, release by release, using France’s official companies gazette (BODACC) for the corporate facts and MusicBrainz and Apple’s iTunes catalogue data for the credit lines. It does not resolve what legal relationship produces the pattern. No licence, distribution or recording agreement between Dadju, Amaterasu Prod and any Universal entity was obtained for this record, and none is asserted to exist beyond what the public metadata shows.
