Simi Signed With Platoon in 2020. Her Own Catalogue Shows AWAL Holding the License Since 2022, and Platoon Nowhere.

Nigerian singer Simi’s signing to Platoon was announced twice, by two different outlets, on consecutive days in September 2020, with quotes from her and from Platoon’s chief executive. It is a deal this desk cannot verify ever took effect. Every release in her catalogue from 2014 to 2026, read directly from Apple’s own metadata, was checked, and Platoon is not named on a single one, including the EP that trade coverage said would come through the platform. What her catalogue does show, starting almost two years later and without a comparable announcement, is an exclusive license held by AWAL, a Sony Music Entertainment division, over recordings that remain owned by her own imprint, Studio Brat.

What was announced, and what was checked against it

On 14 September 2020, Simi told her own audience she was joining Platoon, and the story ran the same week in both Nigerian and pan-African trade press. One outlet quoted her directly: “Platoon definitely stood out for me because of the energy. When you’re doing art, it is always important for everyone to be on the same wavelength.” Platoon’s chief executive, Denzyl Feigelson, was quoted in the same coverage welcoming her: “We’re really looking forward to seeing your music spread out to the entire globe, which it should.” The reports named Mr Eazi and Cuppy as artists who had already signed to the label, and framed Simi’s forthcoming EP, Restless II, as the project that would follow through Platoon.

None of the coverage this desk located states what kind of agreement was signed. Platoon is described in different reports as a “creative services company” and as a distributor, which are different things: a services company might develop and market an artist without ever appearing on a rights credit, while a genuine label or licensing deal usually does. That ambiguity is exactly the kind of gap this desk exists to close, so the announcement was tested against the one document that updates automatically and says, in a fixed legal phrase, who is named on a recording: the phonogram, or “℗,” credit on the release itself.

The EP that was supposed to prove it

Restless II came out on 2 October 2020, less than three weeks after the Platoon announcement. Its phonogram credit, pulled directly from Apple’s catalogue metadata, reads only “℗ 2020 Simi.” No company is named at all, Platoon or otherwise. Every other release around it, both before and after, carries a corporate credit. The single self-credited release in the middle of a run of company-credited ones is not, by itself, proof that the Platoon relationship collapsed; it could equally reflect a short-term structure specific to that one EP. But it is the opposite of what the announcement led readers to expect, and no source reviewed by this desk explains it.

This site’s own record on Platoon Ltd, built separately from MusicBrainz’s rights registry rather than from press coverage, lists 408 releases carrying the Platoon label as of the date it was compiled, including African artists Mr Eazi, Amaarae, Kwesi Arthur, Nonso Amadi, Dope Saint Jude, Bongeziwe Mabandla and others. Mr Eazi’s presence on that list, dated back to 2016, corroborates that Platoon’s own trade-press framing of him as a signee did in fact produce a credited release. Simi’s name is not on that list, in any year.

What replaced it, quietly, in 2022

The next change in Simi’s credit line came without a comparable public announcement. Starting with the single “Naked Wire,” released 20 May 2022, the phonogram line reads “Studio Brat, under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings Ltd.” Studio Brat is Simi’s own recording imprint; it is named as the rights holder in this line and in every version of her credit going back to 2019. AWAL is licensed to exploit the recordings, not to own them. The same structure holds through the album TBH (3 June 2022), the singles “Logba Logba” and “Loyal” later that year, the album Lost and Found (5 July 2024) and her most recent singles, including one dated January 2026.

AWAL is not an independent company, a structure this desk has documented before on another artist’s catalogue. Sony Music Entertainment agreed on 1 February 2021 to acquire AWAL, along with Kobalt Neighbouring Rights, from Kobalt Music Group for 430 million US dollars, a deal that closed later that year. That acquisition predates Simi’s first AWAL-credited release by more than a year, so the company she licensed to in May 2022 was already a Sony division by the time the credit changed, whatever the private negotiation between Studio Brat and AWAL actually involved.

Two releases break the pattern in the other direction. “Tbh (Acoustic) – EP,” out 23 December 2022, and the single “Stranger,” out 9 June 2023, both revert to the older credit, “Studio Brat / Mad Solutions LLC,” with AWAL-credited releases on either side of both. No source explains the reversion, and this record does not resolve it. It could reflect a rights carve-out for those two specific recordings, a lapse in an otherwise continuous license, or simply an inconsistency in how the metadata was filed. What can be said is that it happened twice, in each case for a single release, with no lasting change to the pattern that followed.

Owns, licenses, announces: three different things

This record turns on keeping three separate claims apart. Being announced as signed to a company is a public relations event; a trade outlet reporting it is not itself evidence of a legal document, let alone of what that document says. Owning a master recording and licensing someone else to exploit it are two different legal positions, and Simi’s own catalogue states plainly, release by release, which company held which position and when. Studio Brat has been named as owner on every credit this desk found from 2019 onward; only the identity of the licensee has changed, from no named licensee at all in 2020 and 2021, to AWAL from May 2022.

Mad Solutions LLC appears on the same credit lines as Studio Brat across a six-year span, both before and after the AWAL period, and this desk has not established what role it plays beyond the shared credit. It is not listed as a party to this record for that reason. A rights registry naming a company is a statement that the company is named; it is not, on its own, a statement of what the company does.

What this means for artists

A press announcement is not a rights document. Simi’s own case shows a signing covered by two separate outlets, with executives quoted by name, that left no trace on a single release. That does not mean the announcement was false; deals fall through, structures change, and services agreements do not always produce a credit. It means an announcement, however well covered, is the start of a question, not the answer to it.

The document that does answer it is the one filed with every release: the phonogram credit. If you are an artist or a manager trying to work out what a deal actually did, the ℗ line on the next release is a fixed, dated, public record of who is claiming ownership and who is claiming a license, and it will contradict a press release if the underlying deal changed or never closed. Checking it costs nothing and requires no lawyer.

Know the difference between who owns your masters and who is licensed to move them. Studio Brat’s continuous presence on every credit line, through a Platoon announcement that left no mark and an AWAL license that plainly did, is itself informative: whatever changed for Simi commercially between 2020 and 2022, her own company kept the copyright throughout. That is a different, and generally stronger, position than an artist who signs a masters deal outright, and it is visible only by reading the credit rather than the press coverage of it.

Limits of this record. The Platoon announcement and its quotes come from two separate trade reports published within a day of each other in September 2020, cited above by name and date, both fetched directly by this desk. The catalogue evidence, including every phonogram credit cited, comes from Apple’s own catalogue metadata for Simi’s full discography, queried directly by artist ID rather than taken from a secondary summary. Platoon’s own release list comes from this site’s separate, independently sourced record on Platoon Ltd, built from MusicBrainz’s rights registry. The AWAL acquisition price and date come from trade coverage of Sony Music Entertainment’s own announcement. No source reviewed by this desk states what became of the Platoon relationship, what Mad Solutions LLC’s role is, why two releases briefly reverted to the pre-AWAL credit, or what territory or term the AWAL license covers. Those are recorded here as open questions, not resolved.