Deal sheet
- Status
- Partially confirmed. The label stack on the master recordings is confirmed by a dated statement from a named party, KeyQaad, corroborated by two independent metadata sources and by a regulatory filing establishing that Warner Records Inc. exists as a named Delaware subsidiary of Warner Music Group. The deal type, term, territory and consideration are NOT confirmed and no party has disclosed them.
- Type
- Distribution, Licensing
- Parties
- KeyQaad, Sire Records, Warner Records Inc., Warner Music Group
- Amount
- Not disclosed Not disclosed
- Rights covered
- Master recordings only. This record does not cover Omah Lay's publishing, which sits under a separate worldwide administration agreement with Kobalt Music Group announced on 1 June 2022 and certified in a separate record. The exact rights transferred, licensed or retained as between KeyQaad, Sire Records and Warner Records Inc. are NOT established: no party has described the arrangement as a licence, a distribution agreement, a joint venture or an assignment. What is established is the credit stack. KeyQaad is named first on every phonogram line in the catalogue from January 2020 onward, which is consistent with KeyQaad being the phonogram owner, and the earliest 2020 entries use the explicit wording "KeyQaad under exclusive license to Sire Records." From the 3 April 2026 album onward the second name in that line is Warner Records Inc. rather than Sire Records.
- Territory
- Not disclosed by any party. The Apple phonogram line was read from the United States storefront and reproduces identically on the GB storefront. A trade report dated 7 November 2020 characterised the original 2020 arrangement as covering "the international market," but that is a trade characterisation, not a party statement, and no party has confirmed a territorial split. MusicBrainz records both 2026 releases with a worldwide release event.
- Announced
- 2026-04-06
- Primary document
- Official newsroom
- Sources
- KeyQaad's own site, post dated 6 April 2026, headlined "OMAH LAY GETS CLEAR ON SOPHOMORE ALBUM CLARITY OF MIND OUT NOW VIA KEYQAAD/SIRE RECORDS/WARNER RECORDS" and stating in body copy that the album is "out now via KeyQaad/Sire Records/Warner Records" · Apple iTunes Lookup API, CLARITY OF MIND, fetched HTTP 200 on 18 September 2026. Release date 2026-04-03, 12 tracks, copyright line "℗ 2026 KeyQaad / Warner Records Inc." Sire Records does not appear. · Apple iTunes Lookup API, DON'T LOVE ME – A COLORS SHOW – Single, fetched HTTP 200 on 18 September 2026. Release date 2026-05-04, 1 track, copyright line "℗ 2026 KeyQaad / Warner Records Inc." · Apple iTunes Lookup API, Omah Lay's full discography, fetched HTTP 200 on 18 September 2026, 65 collections. Establishes the credit sequence: "℗ 2019 1174970 Records DK" on the April and May 2019 releases; "℗ 2020 KeyQaad" and "℗ 2020 KeyQaad under exclusive license to Sire Records" on parallel entries for the January 2020 single; "℗ 2020 KeyQaad, Distributed By Dapper" on one February 2020 entry; the shortened "KeyQaad / Sire Records" form from October 2020 through February 2026; and "KeyQaad / Warner Records Inc." from April 2026. · MusicBrainz web service, fetched HTTP 200 on 18 September 2026. Release 5a40adb6-a3ff-4f12-ba55-d6801b148dc9, CLARITY OF MIND, 2026-04-03, barcode 093624824176, labels "Sire Records; KeyQaad". Release f2dbfb22-3dff-4501-933f-1f4e6a8b77f8, DON'T LOVE ME – A COLORS SHOW, 2026-05-04, barcode 054391215888, labels "Sire Records; KeyQaad". Neither carries a Warner Records label credit, contradicting Apple. · Warner Music Group Corp. Exhibit 21.1, Subsidiaries of the Registrant, filed 20 November 2025, accession 0001319161-25-000034. Fetched HTTP 200 on 18 September 2026. 446 rows. Contains "Warner Records Inc. | United States, DE", "Warner Records LLC | United States, DE", "Warner Records/SIRE Ventures LLC | United States, DE", "London-Sire Records Inc. | United States, DE", "Warner Music West Africa Limited | Nigeria", "Africori Limited | United Kingdom", "Africori SA PTY LTD. | South Africa". Contains no row named "Sire Records" standing alone. · Warner Music Group Corp. Exhibit 21.1 filed 2020, accession 0001319161-20-000032, 150 rows, fetched and read 18 September 2026. Lists "Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) | Delaware", establishing the renaming from Warner Bros. Records. · Warner Records' own website, fetched HTTP 200 on 18 September 2026, 857,241 bytes. Artist roster grid carries an Omah Lay card with links to his official Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube and TikTok accounts. · Trade report dated 7 November 2020 by Bamise Oyetayo. States Omah Lay "secured a joint signing with Warner Music Group through Sire Records" "sometime late September", describes it as "a distribution one that gives Warner Records distribution rights of Omah Lay's works in the international market", notes "It isn't quite clear why this signing was not announced", and records that "Omah Lay was originally signed to KeyQaad, a Nigerian recording company". No financial terms. Conflicts with Apple's "exclusive license" wording. · Companies House company search for "keyqaad", run 18 September 2026. Result: "No results found". Establishes that "The KeyQaad Ltd", the form appearing on a 14 December 2021 phonogram line, is not a UK registration under that name. · DistroKid help centre, Wayback snapshot of 31 December 2024, fetched 18 September 2026 because the live page returns HTTP 403. Verbatim: "If you don't specify a record label name when uploading to DistroKid … your record label may be listed as a number, followed by 'Records DK'" and "we have no ownership over your music or anything like that." Explains the "1174970 Records DK" line on Omah Lay's 2019 releases and establishes it implies no ownership claim. · Warner Music Group newsroom, fetched HTTP 200 on 18 September 2026, 119,554 bytes. NEGATIVE CHECK: contains no mention of Omah Lay. No announcement of the April 2026 credit change was located there. · NEGATIVE CHECK: returns HTTP 403 to this server. Sire Records' own site could not be read.
Read this before citing: Read this before citing. This record certifies WHICH COMPANIES ARE NAMED on Omah Lay's master recordings and WHEN THE NAMES CHANGED. It does not certify who owns the masters, because no party has said. Three sources give three different label stacks for the same April 2026 album: KeyQaad's own post names KeyQaad, Sire Records and Warner Records; Apple's phonogram line names KeyQaad and Warner Records Inc. and omits Sire; MusicBrainz names Sire Records and KeyQaad and omits Warner. That contradiction is reported here as a finding, not resolved. A phonogram line is a declaration of who controls exploitation of a recording, not a deed of title, and credit order is a convention rather than a legal instrument. Warner Music Group's SEC subsidiary exhibit lists no entity named Sire Records alone, which means the April 2026 change moved the second name from an imprint brand to a named incorporated subsidiary; what that means for the underlying contract is NOT established and is not asserted here. Two further conflicts are on the file: Apple's 2020 metadata says "exclusive license" while a 7 November 2020 trade report says distribution, and that same report dates the Warner tie to "late September" 2020 while Sire-credited listings exist against the 22 May 2020 Get Layd EP, although a phonogram year cannot fix a delivery date. No financial term of any kind has been disclosed. STANDARDS DESK ADDENDUM, 19 September 2026: the MusicBrainz citation for the Sire Records label credit above has since been re-typed by MusicBrainz's community as a "Bootleg Production" / "label impersonating Sire Records" on the exact release cited (barcode 093624824176), and a second MusicBrainz entry for the same album (barcode 823375044253) now carries only KeyQaad. See the correction note on the published record for detail. This is a further complication, not a resolution.
Correction, 19 September 2026: This record’s “What is established” section cites MusicBrainz’s release entry for CLARITY OF MIND, barcode 093624824176, as carrying label credits “Sire Records; KeyQaad” as of 18 September 2026. On re-check the next day, MusicBrainz’s own community data had changed: the Sire Records label credit on that specific release is now typed as a “Bootleg Production” with the disambiguation “bootleg release label impersonating Sire Records,” and a second, separately barcoded MusicBrainz entry for the same album (823375044253) has appeared carrying only the KeyQaad label, with no Sire Records credit at all. This does not resolve the underlying contradiction the record describes between Apple, KeyQaad and MusicBrainz; it means the MusicBrainz leg of that contradiction is itself now disputed within MusicBrainz’s own editing history, not settled, and that a Sire Records credit sourced to MusicBrainz should not be read as more reliable than the Apple or KeyQaad accounts it conflicts with. The Apple, KeyQaad, SEC and Warner Records citations above are unaffected by this and were not re-checked as part of this correction. Standards desk: Yewande Coker.
On 6 April 2026, KeyQaad, the Lagos label that has carried the phonogram credit on Omah Lay’s recordings since January 2020, published a post on its own site stating that his second album, CLARITY OF MIND, was “out now via KeyQaad/Sire Records/Warner Records.” That is the first on-record statement by any named party to the arrangement describing which companies sit on his master recordings. It names three. Apple’s phonogram line on the same album names two, KeyQaad and Warner Records Inc., and drops Sire. MusicBrainz names two, Sire Records and KeyQaad, and drops Warner. Warner Music Group’s own subsidiary schedule filed with the SEC lists Warner Records Inc. as a Delaware entity and contains no row named Sire Records standing alone. No consideration, term, territory or deal type has been disclosed by any party.
What is established
KeyQaad’s post of 6 April 2026, read directly from keyqaad.com, states in its body copy that CLARITY OF MIND is “out now via KeyQaad/Sire Records/Warner Records” and repeats the same three-name stack in its headline. The post carries a publication timestamp of 6 April 2026 and a modification timestamp the same day. This is a statement by a named party to the arrangement, not a trade report about it.
Apple’s iTunes Lookup API, queried for the album on 18 September 2026, returns a phonogram line reading “2026 KeyQaad / Warner Records Inc.” for CLARITY OF MIND, released 3 April 2026, twelve tracks. The follow-up single DON’T LOVE ME – A COLORS SHOW, released 4 May 2026, carries the identical line. From October 2020 to February 2026 the second name in that line was Sire Records on most KeyQaad-credited entries, with a handful of entries naming KeyQaad alone and none naming Warner Records Inc. The change of the second name is therefore observable across two consecutive releases, not a one-off metadata slip.
MusicBrainz, queried the same day, holds both 2026 releases with label credits “Sire Records; KeyQaad” and no Warner Records entry: CLARITY OF MIND, barcode 093624824176, and DON’T LOVE ME – A COLORS SHOW, barcode 054391215888. Both are recorded with a single worldwide release event, area code XW.
Warner Music Group Corp.’s Exhibit 21.1, Subsidiaries of the Registrant, filed with the SEC on 20 November 2025, lists 446 entities. Among them: Warner Records Inc. (United States, DE), Warner Records LLC (United States, DE), Warner Records/SIRE Ventures LLC (United States, DE) and London-Sire Records Inc. (United States, DE). There is no row named Sire Records on its own. The same registrant’s 2020 exhibit records the entity as “Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.)”. The exhibit separately lists Warner Music West Africa Limited (Nigeria), Africori Limited (United Kingdom) and Africori SA PTY LTD. (South Africa); none of those is Warner Records Inc.
Warner Records’ own website, fetched 18 September 2026, carries an Omah Lay card in its artist roster grid, linking to his official Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube and TikTok accounts.
What is not established
The legal nature of the relationship. No contract, filing, press release or on-record statement locating it as a licence, a distribution agreement, a joint venture or an assignment has been found. The earliest Apple catalogue entries for Omah Lay’s 2020 releases carry the wording “KeyQaad under exclusive license to Sire Records,” which would make KeyQaad the phonogram owner and Sire a licensee; a trade report dated 7 November 2020 instead described the tie-up as “a distribution one that gives Warner Records distribution rights of Omah Lay’s works in the international market.” Those are different legal relationships and this record does not pick between them.
Why the credit changed in April 2026. Warner Music Group’s newsroom, fetched 18 September 2026 at HTTP 200, contains no mention of Omah Lay. sirerecords.com returns HTTP 403 to this server. KeyQaad’s post names Sire and Warner Records together without describing either role.
Any financial term. No amount, royalty rate, advance, equity element, term length or territory has been disclosed by KeyQaad, Sire Records, Warner Records Inc. or Warner Music Group.
KeyQaad’s exact registered legal name. A 14 December 2021 phonogram line reads “The KeyQaad Ltd / Sire Records,” the only appearance of a limited-company form in the catalogue. A Companies House search for “keyqaad” returns “No results found,” so it is not a UK registration under that name. Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission offers no public API, so no registry check was possible.
