Ruger Signed to a ‘Sony/Columbia’ Joint Venture in 2021. The Company on His Records Was Run by Columbia’s Own President, and Sony’s Stake in It Quietly Ended in 2023

Nigeria’s D’Prince announced in January 2021 that his label, Jonzing World, had signed a new artist, Ruger, describing it as a joint venture with Sony Music Entertainment UK and Columbia Records. Every Ruger release checked from that signing through his very public 2024 exit from Jonzing World, and every release since, carries a different name on its phonogram credit: Promised Land Recordings Ltd, a small London company whose sole director for most of its life has also been a former president of Columbia Records UK, and in which Sony itself held a quiet minority stake for almost seven years. That stake ended in March 2023, eleven months before Ruger’s split from D’Prince. The credit line did not move when Sony did.

What the phonogram credit actually shows

Apple Music’s own catalogue data for Ruger (artist ID 1548965965, checked 8 September 2026 across 39 releases) tells a consistent story from his February 2021 debut single through August 2023: “Jonzing World Entertainment Limited under exclusive licence to Promised Land Recordings Limited.” That wording states something specific. Jonzing World, D’Prince’s Nigerian company, held the sound recording copyright. Promised Land Recordings, the London company, held an exclusive licence to exploit it, the standard structure for a UK label-services or marketing-and-distribution arrangement. Neither Sony Music nor Columbia Records appears anywhere in the credit line, on any release, at any point.

On 6 February 2024, Ruger announced on Instagram that he was leaving Jonzing World: “Thank you Jonzing world and dprince for believing in me and taking me this far… It’s sad that I have to leave but God knows best… It is time for @blownboyent.” His new imprint, Blownboy Entertainment, had no Nigerian CAC filing this desk could check (the CAC has no public search interface) and no UK company registration under that name. Two of his first releases under the new banner, Romeo Must Die and the joint EP RnB with fellow Nigerian artist BNXN, carried a different credit entirely: “Blown Boy Ent. / T.Y.E / EMPIRE,” naming BNXN’s T.Y.E label and EMPIRE Distribution. Promised Land Recordings was absent.

It did not stay absent. From November 2024 onward, Ruger’s catalogue, including his 2025 album BlownBoy RU and his 2026 EP R.U. (Raw & Unfiltered), Vol. 1, carries the credit “Blownboy Entertainment under exclusive license to Promised Land Recordings Limited.” The label name on the left of that credit changed, from Jonzing World to Ruger’s own company. The name on the right, the one actually holding the exclusive licence, did not.

The company behind the credit

Promised Land Recordings Ltd is UK company number 09976496, incorporated 29 January 2016, registered at Berners Street in London and classified under Companies House SIC code 59200, sound recording and music publishing activities. Its persons-with-significant-control register, checked directly on 8 September 2026, lists one active entry: Ferdinand Rafael Andrej Unger-Hamilton, holding 75 per cent or more of its shares and voting rights since 6 April 2016. He has also been the company’s sole listed director since incorporation.

The same register lists one ceased entry: Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited, holding between 25 and 50 per cent of the shares and voting rights, notified 7 November 2016, ceased 30 March 2023. A Sony-nominated director, Michael Anthony Smith, was appointed the same day the stake was notified and resigned the same day it ended. A corporate secretarial nominee, Abogado Nominees Limited, resigned three weeks later, on 17 April 2023.

7 November 2016 is not a coincidental date. It is the exact day trade press reported that Ferdy Unger-Hamilton took charge as president of Columbia Records UK, a role in which, the same reporting stated, he would also run “a joint venture, as yet un-named, in partnership with Sony Music UK,” a venture first flagged to the trade in February that year, two weeks after Promised Land Recordings was incorporated. No document obtained states in so many words that Promised Land Recordings is that joint venture. No party has ever confirmed it. But the incorporation date, the SIC code, the exact-day match between Unger-Hamilton’s Columbia appointment and Sony’s PSC notification, and an unbroken run of Promised Land Recordings credits on Sony/Columbia-branded African signings all point the same way, and this piece reports that as the best-supported reading of the public record, not as a confirmed fact.

Unger-Hamilton’s departure from Columbia Records UK was announced on 21 November 2022, after six years in the role. Sony’s stake in Promised Land Recordings, and its nominee director’s seat, both ended a little over four months later, on 30 March 2023. Whether the two events are formally connected is not established by anything obtained for this record; what is established is that they happened in that order, roughly four months apart, and that Unger-Hamilton kept full ownership and control of the company through and after both.

What did not change when the story says it did

The public narrative around Ruger’s February 2024 exit from Jonzing World, in his own words and in the Nigerian trade press that covered it, is a story about independence: an artist walking away from a label deal to bet on himself. Nothing in the documents obtained contradicts that as a description of his relationship with D’Prince and Jonzing World specifically. Jonzing World has not appeared on a Ruger release since. But the company that actually held the exclusive exploitation licence throughout the Jonzing World years, Promised Land Recordings Ltd, still holds it. It held it before Ruger’s deal, throughout it, through a two-month gap in early 2024 when a different distributor (EMPIRE, via BNXN’s T.Y.E label) handled two releases, and continuously since November 2024. The one thing that changed on 30 March 2023, nearly a year before any public break with Jonzing World, was Sony’s declared stake in that same company.

This record does not establish that Sony had any role in, or knowledge of, Ruger’s move to Blownboy Entertainment; nothing obtained supports that. It also does not establish what Promised Land Recordings’ current commercial relationship with Sony or Columbia is, if any, now that Sony’s equity position has formally ended. What it does establish, from Companies House’s own register and Apple Music’s own catalogue metadata, both checked directly, is that a UK company once part-owned by a major label, and still run by that major label’s former UK president, has been the constant thread in Ruger’s licensing arrangements since before his major-label deal was announced and after his public exit from it.

What this means for artists

An artist told they are signing to “Sony Music” or “Columbia Records” in a territory like Nigeria should ask, specifically, which legal entity will hold the exclusive licence to their masters, and who owns that entity. The name on a press release and the name on the copyright line are not always the same company, and the gap between them is exactly where a label-services joint venture like this one sits: close enough to a major to use its name in a signing announcement, independent enough on paper that the major’s own filings barely need to mention it. That structure is not illegal and is common in the UK label-services market. It does mean that when an artist “leaves” the Nigerian label named in the announcement, as Ruger did, the international company actually licensing the masters may not leave with it, and an artist auditing their own catalogue’s ownership chain needs to check the copyright line itself, not the press release, to find out who they are actually still doing business with.