Darkoo Owns Her Masters and Licenses Them to Her Manager’s London Company. It Told Companies House It Was Dormant in the Year It Released Her Biggest Single, and the Registrar Moved to Strike It Off on 1 September 2026.

Darkoo has never sold her master recordings. What changed hands in May 2024 was a licence: her own company, Darkoo Ltd, granted an exclusive licence over her new recordings to Black Pearl Music Group Ltd, a London company incorporated eight months earlier by two directors, one of whom had been named in trade press as her manager. No consideration has been disclosed by any party.

That licensee has since told the UK registrar that it was dormant for the financial year in which it released her biggest single. On 1 September 2026 the registrar published a first Gazette notice to strike it off the register. On 24 October 2026 that action was suspended. The company still exists, and it has not filed accounts for the year to 30 September 2025.

Who owns what

The copyright line on a release is an assertion of who owns the sound recording. On Darkoo’s catalogue it has been unusually consistent on the one point that matters most: the owner is her, or a company she controls.

From November 2019 her releases read “℗ 2019 Darkoo, under exclusive license to Universal Music Operations Limited”, carried as a Virgin EMI Records release and later as an EMI release. From November 2020 they read “℗ 2020 Darkoo Limited under exclusive licence to Warner Music UK Limited”, carried as an Atlantic Records UK release. That run continued to June 2022.

Read precisely, neither major ever owned these recordings. Both took an exclusive licence from the artist’s side. The distinction is not cosmetic. An assignment moves the copyright; an exclusive licence leaves it where it is and grants exploitation rights for a term. When the term ends, the recordings revert to the owner named in that line.

There is one exception in the Warner period. A remix released on 29 April 2022 reads “An Atlantic Records UK release., ℗ 2022 Warner Music UK Limited”, naming Warner as the owner with no licence-from wording at all. Nothing obtained explains why that recording is credited differently from those around it.

UK Companies House records DARKOO LTD as company number 12328587, incorporated 22 November 2019, status Active, with the single activity code 59200, sound recording and music publishing. Its sole person with significant control is Oluwafisayo Adeyaunwa Isa, born September 2001, holding 75 per cent or more of both shares and voting rights. A rights registry gives Darkoo’s legal name as Oluwafisayo Isa and her date of birth as 18 September 2001. Two older directors sharing the Isa surname were appointed a fortnight after incorporation. This is an artist-controlled, family-boarded company, and it has filed accounts up to 30 November 2025.

A similarly named company, DARKOO&CO LIMITED, number 10050760, was dissolved on 15 August 2017 and its only director was a Ghanaian national named Prince Darko. It has nothing to do with the artist.

What arrived in May 2024

On 3 May 2024 the single Favourite Girl appeared reading “℗ 2024 Darkoo LTD under exclusive license to Black Pearl Music Group LTD”. The structure was the same as the Universal and Warner deals before it. Only the counterparty was new.

BLACK PEARL MUSIC GROUP LTD is UK company 15147662, incorporated 19 September 2023, activity code 59200, registered at 124-128 City Road, London EC1V 2NJ. It has two directors, both appointed on the day of incorporation: Terry Appiasei, born November 1992, and Patrick Lubega, born April 1993. Both are also persons with significant control, each recorded as holding more than 25 per cent but not more than 50 per cent of the shares and votes, and each holding the right to appoint or remove directors. No corporate shareholder appears. No parent company appears. Nobody has resigned.

A trade-press interview published on 1 March 2022, in which an Atlantic executive confirmed Darkoo signed to the label in 2020, quotes “Manager Terry Appiasei” on her artistry. That was eighteen months before this company was incorporated and more than two years before it entered her copyright line.

This desk cannot close that identification on identifiers. Companies House publishes only the month and year of a person’s birth, and the trade interview gives no date of birth. The match rests on an exact name, the same industry, and the appearance of that person’s company as licensee of that same artist’s masters. It is reported as the best-supported reading of the public record, not as a confirmed fact. Nothing located gives Patrick Lubega any role with Darkoo beyond this company.

The dormant filing

The only accounts Black Pearl Music Group has ever filed are accounts for a dormant company, made up to 30 September 2024 and filed on 5 June 2025. A dormant company is one that has had no significant accounting transaction during the period.

Favourite Girl was released on 3 May 2024 and the version with Rema on 8 August 2024. Both fall inside the year to 30 September 2024. Both carry the company in the credit. Dormant accounts establish an absence of recorded transactions, not an absence of activity or of assets, and this record does not claim the latter. But a company named as exclusive licensee of a charting Afrobeats single, in the year that single was released, reporting no significant accounting transaction, is a gap between the commercial story and the filed one.

Accounts for the year to 30 September 2025 were due by 30 June 2026 and have not been filed. The confirmation statement due by 2 October 2026 has not been filed. On 1 September 2026 the registrar issued a first Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off, the step that precedes dissolving a company for non-filing. On 24 October 2026 the register recorded that the compulsory strike-off action had been suspended. Suspension halts the process; it does not cure the defaults, and the company’s status today reads “Active – Active proposal to strike off”.

One song, two owners

The clearest sign that this chain is not settled sits on a single recording. Favourite Girl with Rema exists as two catalogue entries, released a day apart, both live today and identical across the Apple storefronts for the United Kingdom, United States, Nigeria, South Africa and France.

The 8 August 2024 entry reads “℗ 2024 Black Pearl Music Group, under exclusive licence to Ditto Plus”. The 9 August 2024 entry reads “℗ 2024 Darkoo LTD under exclusive licence to Black Pearl Music Group LTD and Ditto Plus”.

Those two lines name different owners of the same recording. In the first, Black Pearl owns it. In the second, Darkoo Ltd owns it and Black Pearl is one of two licensees. The pattern recurs across 2025, where Like Dat, Your Number and the EP $exy Girl $ummer Vol. 1 all read “℗ 2025 Black Pearl Music Group, under exclusive licence to Ditto”, with the artist’s company absent from the line entirely.

A further imprecision sits downstream. “Ditto” and “Ditto Plus” appear on phonogram lines, but the only company on the UK register carrying the Ditto Plus name, number 12699250, is a music publishing company, and publishing is a different right from the sound recording these lines describe. A separate company, DITTO MUSIC LABEL SERVICES LIMITED, number 11454552, matches the credit on her most recent release. Nothing obtained establishes which registered entity any given credit refers to.

Black Pearl drops out

Black Pearl’s last appearance on an own-billed Darkoo release is the Solar live session of 22 May 2026. Her single THAT GIRL!, released 7 August 2026, reads “℗ 2026 Darkoo, under licence to Ditto Label Services”. Black Pearl is gone from the line, and the wording is “under licence”, not “under exclusive licence”.

Three weeks later the registrar gazetted the company. This desk makes no causal claim about that sequence: it is a fact about a calendar. No party has announced the end of any agreement, and no document obtained states the term or territory of the licence that began in May 2024.

What this means for artists

The useful lesson here is not about one company’s filing record. It is that Darkoo’s position through three deals, with two majors and one independent, was stronger than the announcements around her ever suggested, because the ownership line never moved. An artist who licenses rather than assigns keeps the asset. When a label relationship ends, as hers with Atlantic did, the catalogue does not have to be bought back.

The second lesson is that a licensee is only as good as the company behind it. A credit line is not a credit check. Any artist or manager can look up a counterparty on a public register in two minutes and read its filing history, its directors, its shareholders and whether the registrar is trying to strike it off. If a company that collects your recording income has filed dormant accounts for a year in which it released your records, or has stopped filing altogether, that is visible to you before it becomes a problem.

Third, watch who is on both sides. A manager holding a stake in the company that licenses the artist’s masters is a lawful and common structure, and it can be the fastest route to an independent release. It also means the person negotiating for the artist may sit across the table from the artist. That is a conflict to be documented and consented to, not assumed away.

What could not be established

No contract was obtained, so the term, territory, royalty rate and scope of the Darkoo Ltd licence to Black Pearl Music Group are not established. No consideration figure exists in any source; “not disclosed” here means no party has published one, not that a known figure is being withheld. Reports exist of an August 2025 statement by the artist about the termination of earlier label contracts, but the page carrying it would not serve to this desk, returning a challenge-validation block on repeated attempts, so nothing from it is relied on here. The reason Black Pearl’s strike-off was suspended is not stated on the register. Neither Darkoo Ltd nor Black Pearl Music Group Ltd has published any statement about their arrangement, and no newsroom release announcing it was located.