Deal sheet
- Status
- WHAT THE CREDIT LINE SAYS. Innoss'B's album ARENA WAY, 16 tracks, released 28 August 2026, carries this phonographic copyright notice on Apple Music, Apple album id 6799973483: "2026 M Soul Records, Distributed worldwide by ONErpm, Marketed and promoted by WMA United Africa Limited." Read on its own, that is three named parties doing three different things to the same recordings: M Soul Records owns the masters, ONErpm moves them to retailers and streaming services, WMA United Africa Limited handles marketing and promotion.
THE TIMELINE BEHIND THAT LINE. Innoss'B is the stage name of Innocent Didace Balume, born 5 May 1997 in Goma, North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His catalogue on Apple Music, artist id 675919606, was read in full for this record, covering releases from 2013 to 2026.
The earliest entry, the 2013 debut album credited to "Innocent / Big Afrika," carries a different rights holder, Interglobe Music. From 2016 the notices shift to M Soul Records, also rendered as Maisha Soul Records and M SOUL RECORDS across different releases: Pepele and Logik in 2016, the Plus EP in 2017, Lelo Lelo, Mur and Mon Boulot in 2018, Yo pe in 2019, Mortel-06 in 2021, the live album AFROCONGO PLANET LIVE in 2023, the Calcul EP on 29 March 2024 and Amapiupiu on 19 September 2024. All of those notices read M Soul Records or a spelling variant, standing alone, with no distributor or marketing credit named.
Two releases break that pattern on the ownership side rather than the distribution side: Olandi in 2020 and MEME in 2021 both carry a different rights holder, Privaty Prod, not M Soul Records. Whether that reflects a separate licence, a different project, or a metadata error was not established; the notices do not explain the switch and no statement from either name was located.
ONErpm's name first appears on 29 May 2026, on the single GO 243, which reads "2026 M Soul Records / ONErpm." WMA United Africa Limited's name first appears three months later, on ARENA WAY, 28 August 2026, in the longer three-clause notice quoted above. Neither addition was announced in a press release, trade report or statement that this desk could find.
WHAT DID NOT CHANGE. Across thirteen years and at least eleven differently credited releases, the name M Soul Records, in one spelling or another, is the constant. It is not a new company stepping in to take over the catalogue; it is the same name that has carried the artist's recordings since 2016, now sitting next to two names that were not there before. The finding in this record is not an ownership transfer. It is the opposite: ownership of the masters is the one thing that has not moved. What changed, twice in 2026, is who else is named for getting the records to listeners and telling people about them.
ONE EARLIER ANOMALY, NOTED BUT NOT CHASED HERE. A release titled "Innocent – Single," dated 15 March 2016 in the same catalogue, carries the notice "2021 Content Connect Africa CCA," a date and a rights holder that do not match the surrounding releases or each other. Content Connect Africa is a company this desk has already covered in a separate record on the Gallo Music Investments transaction. That mismatch is flagged here as a data point and is not investigated further in this record; it does not change any finding above.
WHO M SOUL RECORDS IS. Independent reporting corroborated by this desk ties the name to Maisha Soul, a band formed in 2002 by four brothers surnamed Balume, Prince, Achille, Eric and Innocent, in a displacement camp in Goma after the Mount Nyiragongo volcanic eruption. The brothers trained at the Goma cultural centre Yole!Africa. The label name was already in commercial use by March 2012 and carried Innoss'B's solo debut single that year, ahead of the 2013 album. It is, on the evidence available, a family imprint rather than an outside company that acquired the catalogue.
- Type
- Distribution
- Parties
- M Soul Records, ONErpm, WMA United Africa Limited
- Amount
- Not disclosed Not disclosed. No advance, fee, royalty rate or revenue split appears in the credit line or in any statement located from any party.
- Rights covered
- MASTER RECORDINGS, DISTRIBUTION AND MARKETING ONLY. The phonographic copyright notice names M Soul Records as the rights holder of the sound recording, ONErpm as the worldwide distributor, and WMA United Africa Limited for marketing and promotion. Nothing in the notice touches the compositions. No publisher or administrator for any Innoss'B composition was identified for this record.
- Territory
- WORLDWIDE, per the word 'worldwide' in the distribution credit ('Distributed worldwide by ONErpm'). No separate territory is stated for the marketing credit held by WMA United Africa Limited. The catalogue was read against a single storefront; no comparison across storefronts was run for this record, unlike the desk's earlier Fuse ODG record.
- Announced
- 2026-08-28
- Primary document
- Rights registry
- Sources
- Apple Music catalogue metadata via the public iTunes Lookup API: the phonographic copyright notice on Innoss'B's album ARENA WAY, Apple album id 6799973483, released 28 August 2026, read 22 October 2026 · Apple iTunes Lookup API, Innoss'B artist id 675919606, full catalogue, read 22 October 2026. Source for the 2013 to 2026 timeline of rights-holder credits, including the M Soul Records / Maisha Soul Records continuity, the Privaty Prod anomaly on Olandi and MEME, the first appearance of ONErpm on GO 243 (29 May 2026) and the dated mismatch on "Innocent – Single." · Act for Congo profile of Maisha Soul, read 22 October 2026. Independent corroboration that the band formed in 2002 in a displacement camp in Goma after the Mount Nyiragongo eruption, trained at Yole!Africa, and that Innoss'B (Innocent Balume) is one of four Balume brothers in the group. · Deezer album search for ARENA WAY, read 22 October 2026. No label field was returned for the album; checked and found not to corroborate or contradict the Apple notice either way. · UK Companies House public register search, exact quoted phrase "WMA United Africa," fetched 22 October 2026. No matching company returned. · UK Companies House public register search, unquoted, fetched 22 October 2026. Returned only unrelated near-matches (Africa United Corporation Ltd, United Sports and Entertainment Africa Ltd and similar); no company named WMA United Africa Limited. · OpenCorporates company search, attempted 22 October 2026. Returned a reCAPTCHA interstitial; no results obtained. Recorded as checked but unavailable.
Read this before citing: READ THIS BEFORE CITING.
WHAT A PHONOGRAM NOTICE IS. It is an assertion made by whoever delivered the release to the store. It is not a contract, not a registry filing and not proof of a transaction. This record reports what the notice says and when it started saying it. It does not treat the notice as a legal instrument.
WHAT IS ESTABLISHED.
1. The exact wording of the ARENA WAY credit line, read directly from Apple's iTunes Lookup API on 22 October 2026, and independently viewed on the Apple Music web storefront.
2. That M Soul Records, or a close spelling variant, is the rights holder named on Innoss'B releases continuously from 2016 (Pepele, Logik) through 2024 (Amapiupiu), with no distributor or marketing party named during that period.
3. That ONErpm's name first appears in this catalogue on GO 243, released 29 May 2026, and that WMA United Africa Limited's name first appears on ARENA WAY, released 28 August 2026. Both are the earliest dated appearances found in the full read of the artist's catalogue.
4. Background on Maisha Soul as a family band formed in Goma in 2002, corroborated independently of the DSP metadata.
WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED, AND WHAT WAS CHECKED.
A. WHETHER THIS IS A DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT OR SOMETHING ELSE. The notice is consistent with a distribution deal between M Soul Records and ONErpm, with WMA United Africa Limited engaged separately for marketing. No agreement, press release or statement from any of the three parties was located to confirm the kind of arrangement, its term, its territory beyond the word "worldwide," or whether it covers the whole catalogue or only releases from 2026 onward.
B. CONSIDERATION. No fee, advance, royalty rate or revenue split appears anywhere this desk could find. "Not disclosed" is the honest answer on every money question in this record.
C. WHO OR WHAT WMA UNITED AFRICA LIMITED IS. This is the central gap in this record. The name was searched on the United Kingdom Companies House public register, both as an unquoted phrase and as a quoted exact phrase; neither search returned a company of that name, only unrelated near-matches such as Africa United Corporation Ltd and United Sports and Entertainment Africa Ltd. OpenCorporates could not be queried; the search returned a captcha wall rather than results. No press release, company website, executive name or trade report naming WMA United Africa Limited was found anywhere outside this one credit line. No Nigeria CAC public search exists to check there. The initialism "WMA" coincides with Warner Music Africa, a real company this desk has covered elsewhere, but no document connects the two, and that connection is not made or implied in this record.
D. WHETHER THE TWO 2026 ADDITIONS ARE RELATED TO EACH OTHER. ONErpm and WMA United Africa Limited appear on different releases three months apart. Whether they operate under one combined arrangement or two separate ones was not established.
E. THE OLANDI AND MEME ANOMALY. Two releases, 2020 and 2021, carry Privaty Prod rather than M Soul Records as rights holder, breaking the otherwise continuous M Soul Records credit. No explanation for that was found and none is offered here.
F. THE 2016 DATE MISMATCH ON "INNOCENT – SINGLE." One release in the catalogue is dated 15 March 2016 but carries a 2021 Content Connect Africa CCA copyright notice. This is noted as a data inconsistency and is outside the scope of this record.
G. PUBLISHING. No performing rights or mechanical repertory record for any Innoss'B composition was obtained for this record.
METHOD. Apple's iTunes Lookup API was read for Innoss'B, artist id 675919606, limit 200, on 22 October 2026, returning the artist's full catalogue of albums and singles with dated phonographic copyright notices. The ARENA WAY album, id 6799973483, was read individually to confirm the exact wording of its notice, and independently viewed on the Apple Music web page for the same album. Deezer's album endpoint was checked for a label field on the same album and returned none. Companies House was searched for "WMA United Africa" unquoted and as an exact quoted phrase. OpenCorporates was attempted and returned a captcha wall, not a result, and is recorded here as checked but unavailable rather than as a negative finding.
RIGHT OF REPLY. M Soul Records, ONErpm and WMA United Africa Limited are each invited to state the nature of this arrangement, its term and its territory. This record will be amended on production of a document.
For ten years, one name owned Innoss’B’s masters. Then, in the space of three months in 2026, two more names appeared next to it, and neither one announced itself.
Innoss’B is the stage name of Innocent Didace Balume, the Congolese singer from Goma whose 2019 hit “Yo Pe” and later “Bina Munkenu” carried his sound across East and Central Africa and into the diaspora. His newest album, ARENA WAY, went up on Apple Music on 28 August 2026 with a phonographic copyright notice reading: “2026 M Soul Records, Distributed worldwide by ONErpm, Marketed and promoted by WMA United Africa Limited.” Three parties, three jobs: one owns the recordings, one gets them onto shelves and streaming services, one handles the marketing push.
On its face that is an unremarkable modern distribution setup, the kind of three-way split that plenty of independent African labels run with aggregators and marketing partners. What makes it worth a closer look is what it sits on top of, and what one of those three names turns out to be when you go looking for it.
The name that never changed
Reading Innoss’B’s full Apple Music catalogue back to his 2013 debut turns up a long, mostly unbroken thread. From 2016 onward, release after release, the recordings carry the same rights holder: M Soul Records, sometimes spelled Maisha Soul Records, sometimes rendered in capitals. Pepele and Logik in 2016. The Plus EP in 2017. Lelo Lelo, Mur and Mon Boulot in 2018. Yo pe in 2019. Mortel-06 in 2021. The live album AFROCONGO PLANET LIVE in 2023. The Calcul EP in March 2024. Amapiupiu that September. Every one of them, M Soul Records, standing alone, no distributor named, no marketing partner named.
Two releases break the pattern on ownership rather than distribution: Olandi in 2020 and MEME in 2021 both carry a different name, Privaty Prod, instead of M Soul Records. Nothing in the catalogue explains that switch, and this record does not pretend to either. It is flagged as an open question, not resolved as one.
M Soul Records itself traces back further than the Apple catalogue shows. Independent reporting on the group Maisha Soul, corroborated for this piece, describes four brothers surnamed Balume, Prince, Achille, Eric and Innocent, who formed the band in 2002 in a displacement camp in Goma after the Mount Nyiragongo volcano erupted and forced tens of thousands of residents to flee. The brothers trained at Yole!Africa, the Goma cultural centre that has incubated a generation of Congolese musicians and filmmakers. By March 2012, the Maisha Soul name was already attached to Innoss’B’s earliest solo single, a year ahead of his debut album. This is not an outside company stepping in to take over a catalogue. On the evidence available, it is the artist’s own family imprint, present since before he had a solo career to speak of.
That continuity is the actual headline here, even though it runs against the instinct to chase whatever looks new. Ownership of Innoss’B’s masters has not moved. What changed, twice in 2026, is who else gets named alongside it.
Two new names, three months apart
ONErpm’s name enters the catalogue first, on the single GO 243, released 29 May 2026, with a notice reading “2026 M Soul Records / ONErpm.” ONErpm is a known quantity. It is a working distributor with an established footprint across African markets, and its appearance here reads as exactly what it looks like: M Soul Records picked up a distribution partner for a new release.
WMA United Africa Limited arrives three months later, on ARENA WAY, named for marketing and promotion rather than distribution. And here the trail runs out. Searching the United Kingdom’s Companies House public register, both as a plain search and as an exact quoted phrase, returns no company called WMA United Africa Limited. What comes back instead are unrelated names that happen to share words with it: Africa United Corporation Ltd, United Sports and Entertainment Africa Ltd, and similar near-misses that a word-matching search throws up. OpenCorporates could not be checked at all; the site returned a verification wall instead of search results. No press release, no company website, no named executive, no trade report anywhere mentions WMA United Africa Limited outside this one credit line on this one album.
It is tempting to read “WMA” and think of Warner Music Africa, a real company this desk has written about elsewhere. That temptation should be resisted here. Nothing found in this research ties the two together, no shared address, no shared officer, no statement from either side, and this piece does not make that connection. An initialism is not evidence. What can be said is narrower and plainer: a name appears in a commercial credit line on an African artist’s album, and no public register anywhere this desk could search shows a company by that name.
What could not be established
This record does not know what kind of agreement sits behind the ONErpm or WMA United Africa credits, because no contract, press release or statement from any of the three named parties was found. It does not know the term of any arrangement, or whether it covers Innoss’B’s whole catalogue or only his newest releases. It does not know what, if anything, changed hands financially. No advance, fee, royalty split or price appears anywhere in the public record checked for this story, and “not disclosed” is the honest answer on every money question here, not a placeholder for a number that might turn up later.
It does not know why Olandi and MEME carry a different rights holder than everything around them, and it does not know why a 2016-dated single in the same catalogue carries a 2021 copyright notice crediting a company this desk has covered in an earlier, unrelated record. Both are logged as data inconsistencies, not chased further here. Most of all, this record does not know who or what WMA United Africa Limited actually is. That is not a gap this desk is comfortable papering over with a guess, so it stays open: a name on one credit line, unconfirmed anywhere else.
What this means for artists
The useful lesson here is not really about Innoss’B. It is about what a credit line can and cannot tell you, and that applies to any African artist working with a small, trusted family label rather than a major.
A phonographic copyright notice is not a contract. It is a claim, made by whoever delivers the release to the store, about who owns what and who is doing what with it. For most of Innoss’B’s career, that claim has been simple and consistent: one name, one role, owner of the masters. That consistency is itself worth something. An artist whose label credit does not jump around from release to release has a cleaner story to tell anyone asking who controls the catalogue, whether that is a promoter, a sync licensing buyer, or a future distribution partner.
The moment a second or third name appears next to that owner, an artist or their team should be able to say, plainly, what each new name actually does: distributor, marketing partner, something else, and under what agreement. If an artist’s own team cannot answer that quickly and specifically, nobody doing business with them can either, and that uncertainty eventually shows up as a problem at the worst possible time, usually when money or rights are being sorted out after a dispute rather than before one.
It is also worth artists checking, occasionally, whether the names attached to their own releases actually exist as companies anywhere searchable. That is not a difficult check. It is the same one this desk ran for WMA United Africa Limited: a public company register, searched plainly and then with the exact name in quotes. For most legitimate distributors, marketers and labels, that search turns up something, an incorporation record, a filing, an officer. When it turns up nothing at all, that is not proof of wrongdoing. It is simply a fact worth knowing before, rather than after, a record carries that name into the world.
