Sony Music Entertainment France Has Never Owned ElGrandeToto’s Masters. Its Named Role Changed From Distributor to Exclusive Licensee Between November 2024 and December 2025.

October 9, 2026 6 min read

Deal sheet

Status

Current as at 9 October 2026. The most recent release carrying the Sony pairing is SALGOAT (Vol. 2 – Extension), 27 tracks, 26 June 2026, credited "℗ 2026 EGT Corporation, under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment France SAS".

One later lead-artist release sits outside the pairing. "PASADENA", dated 17 September 2026, is credited to ElGrandeToto and SativaMusic as a duo and carries "℗ 2026 Sativa Music". It is one of six collections in the catalogue credited to him alongside another act, the others being owner-credited to BNJ City Block / DBF / Kartel Vibes (2020), Adrenaline.Ent (2023), 22 RECORDS (2023), Sativa Music (2024) and GZSC / DEMAIN – [PIAS] (2026). Whether those releases sit inside or outside the arrangement evidenced for his solo catalogue could not be established.

No termination, expiry or renewal of any agreement is evidenced. No document located states a term.

Type

Distribution, Licensing

Parties

BNJ City Block, EGT Corporation, CHAPITRE 1 (CHAPITRE 1 SPRL), Sony Music Entertainment France

Amount

None disclosed Not disclosed. No amount, advance, royalty rate, term, option structure or equity component appears in any document located.

No consideration figure is published by Sony Music Entertainment France SAS, by Sony Music France, by any of the three named owner-position companies, or by the artist. The Sony Music France news item of 22 June 2026 announcing SALGOAT (Vol. 2) runs to roughly 81 words and contains no commercial term of any kind.

No equity, no share transfer and no catalogue purchase is evidenced. The transaction types evidenced are a licence of recordings and, for one 2024 phase, a distribution function, nothing more.

Rights covered

MASTER RECORDINGS. The delivered phonogram credit names the owner position on every release. Sony Music Entertainment France SAS is never named in it.

OWNER POSITION, IN SEQUENCE, ACROSS THE 43 RELEASES CREDITED TO ELGRANDETOTO ALONE
BNJ City Block / BNJ CITY BLOCK / BNJ: 20 collections, 19 distinct titles, 25 September 2017 to 24 November 2023. The album 27 was delivered as both a 17-track and a 19-track collection.
Chabaka: 4 collections in 2018, including the seven-track Illicit of 15 July 2018.
ElGrandeToto (the stage name in the owner position): 3 collections, 2019 and 2020.
Toto: 1 collection, 20 May 2018. Hades: 1 collection, 1 November 2018.
CHAPITRE 1: 3 collections, 8 July 2022 to 14 November 2022. CHAPITRE 1 SPRL: 1 collection, 27 December 2022.
EGT Corporation: 9 collections, 23 October 2024 to 26 June 2026.
6128182 Records DK: 1 collection, 7 April 2024. A numbered-entity owner string of the kind produced by self-distribution platforms.

THE SONY RELATIONSHIP, IN THREE PHASES, 19 COLLECTIONS IN TOTAL
Phase 1, 8 July 2022 to 27 December 2022, 4 collections: "CHAPITRE 1, under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment France SAS", the last of the four rendering the owner as CHAPITRE 1 SPRL. The first is the single "Comforter (feat. Ayra Starr)".
Interruption, 28 December 2022 to 25 October 2023: no release carries a Sony credit. Two January 2023 duo releases carry third-party owners, Adrenaline.Ent and 22 RECORDS.
Phase 2, 26 October 2023 to 24 November 2023, 6 collections: "BNJ City Block, under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment France SAS". The owner position has reverted to the company that held it before CHAPITRE 1. Includes both editions of the album 27.
Phase 3a, 23 October 2024 to 29 November 2024, 3 collections: "EGT Corporation, distributed by Sony Music Entertainment France SAS". Includes the 17-track SALGOAT.
Gap of 385 days with no lead-artist release.
Phase 3b, 19 December 2025 to 26 June 2026, 6 collections: "EGT Corporation, under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment France SAS". Includes SALGOAT (Vol. 2), 17 tracks, and SALGOAT (Vol. 2 – Extension), 27 tracks.

THE DISTINCTION THIS RECORD TURNS ON
A distribution credit asserts that a company moves the product and is paid for doing so; rights stay with the owner. An exclusive licence asserts that the owner has granted a company the exclusive right to exploit the recordings for a period and territory, which is a transfer of control short of a transfer of title. Between 29 November 2024 and 19 December 2025 the described function of Sony Music Entertainment France SAS changed from the first to the second, with the same company in the owner position on both sides of the change. No document located accounts for the change.

PUBLISHING. Nothing evidenced. No publisher or administrator is named in any document located for any period of the chain, and no collecting society repertory interface was reachable from this desk for the writer share. This record makes no publishing claim.

ARTIST OWNERSHIP. Not evidenced. EGT carries the artist's initials and BNJ City Block presents as his Casablanca imprint, but no registration, filing or statement located connects him to the ownership of either company. The inference is recorded as an inference.

Territory

Not stated in any document. No credit names a territory.

WHAT CAN BE SAID ABOUT REACH
The credit on SALGOAT (Vol. 2 – Extension), collection 6781240197, is byte-identical on the Apple Music storefronts for Morocco, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, checked 9 October 2026. The credits on SALGOAT (collection 1781129631), the 19-track edition of 27 (collection 1719969447) and "Comforter (feat. Ayra Starr)" (collection 1637112798) are likewise identical on the Moroccan, French and United States storefronts. That evidences that one rights metadata package was delivered worldwide. It does not evidence a worldwide grant: a licensee can deliver a single metadata package to every storefront under a territorially limited agreement, and storefront availability is not a statement of contractual territory.

THE CORPORATE GEOGRAPHY
The only party in this record that resolves to a registration is the licensee. Sony Music Entertainment France SAS is Paris-registered, SIREN 542055603. The repertoire is Moroccan and the owner-position companies present as Moroccan-facing, with BNJ City Block presenting as a Casablanca imprint, but none of the three resolves to a register this desk could reach. The French national business register returns zero results for EGT Corporation, BNJ City Block and Chapitre 1 SPRL. No territory claim is therefore made for the owner side.

Announced

2022-07-08

Primary document

Rights registry

Sources

Read this before citing: A phonogram credit names an owner position. It is an assertion made by the party that delivered the recording to retail, not a title deed, and it is not a contract. This record reports what the parties asserted to the retailers and dates each assertion. It does not claim to report the contents of any agreement.

NOT ESTABLISHED
The jurisdiction of incorporation, officers and beneficial ownership of EGT Corporation, BNJ City Block and CHAPITRE 1 SPRL. The French national business register returns zero results for all three names, checked 9 October 2026, HTTP 200. SPRL is a Belgian legal form and the Belgian company register offers no interface this desk could query without a browser session. Morocco's commercial register offers no public interface at all.
Whether CHAPITRE 1 and CHAPITRE 1 SPRL are the same entity.
Whether the artist owns, controls or holds any interest in any of the three.
Why the Sony credit wording changed between 29 November 2024 and 19 December 2025. That the change coincides with a 385-day release gap is an observation about dates, not a finding about a renegotiation.
Whether the "Chabaka" named in the owner position on four 2018 masters is the same company as the Emirates-based Chabaka Music that Universal Music Group acquired on 30 August 2023. No document connects them and this record makes no such claim.
Whether the artist is signed to any named Sony frontline label. The Sony Music France artist page names none. The frontline label names that do appear in its page source belong to the site-wide footer label list and are not statements about this artist.
Any territory, any term, any figure.

OBSERVATION NOT ADVANCED AS A FINDING
Deezer returns UPC 886449096282 for Caméléon, dated 5 March 2021, which sits in a barcode prefix range associated with Sony-operated delivery, a year and four months before the first Sony credit appears in the phonogram metadata. Barcode prefixes describe which pipeline encoded a release, not who owns it. It is recorded here because it is in the documents, and it is not offered as evidence of an earlier agreement.

Sony Music Entertainment France SAS is named on 19 of the 43 releases ElGrandeToto has issued under his own name, and on none of them is it named as the owner. The owner position is held by three successive Moroccan-facing companies, and between 29 November 2024 and 19 December 2025 the Sony entity’s described function changed from distributor to exclusive licensee with no document explaining why.

Apple’s catalogue for the Moroccan rapper, artist 1438644588, pulled on 9 October 2026 and returning 114 rows, contains 49 collections on which he is the credited artist. Of those, 43 are credited to ElGrandeToto alone. Each row carries the delivered phonogram credit in the copyright field, which is the rights metadata the parties themselves supplied to retail. This record sets out what that metadata establishes about the owner position, the distribution function and the licence, and marks clearly where it stops.

Who is named as owner

Across the 43 solo-credited releases the owner position reads as follows. BNJ City Block, in the casings BNJ City Block, BNJ CITY BLOCK and BNJ, appears on 20 of them, from the single “Pablo” dated 25 September 2017 to both editions of the album 27 dated 24 November 2023. That is 19 distinct titles, because 27 was delivered as a 17-track and a 19-track collection. Chabaka appears on four 2018 releases, including the seven-track Illicit of 15 July 2018. The artist’s own stage name appears on three releases in 2019 and 2020, and the single-word credits Toto and Hades appear once each in 2018.

CHAPITRE 1 appears on three releases between 8 July 2022 and 14 November 2022, and CHAPITRE 1 SPRL on one dated 27 December 2022. EGT Corporation appears on nine releases from the single “DIPLOMATICO” dated 23 October 2024 through the 27-track SALGOAT (Vol. 2 – Extension) dated 26 June 2026.

Sony Music Entertainment France SAS appears in the owner position on nothing. Where it appears, it appears after a comma, in a subordinate clause attached to a different company’s name.

The sequence of the Sony relationship

The first evidenced Sony credit is dated 8 July 2022, on the single “Comforter (feat. Ayra Starr)”, and reads “℗ 2022 CHAPITRE 1, under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment France SAS”. The same string carries across three further releases to 27 December 2022, the last of them substituting CHAPITRE 1 SPRL for CHAPITRE 1.

There is then a ten-month interruption. No Sony credit appears on any release dated between 28 December 2022 and 25 October 2023. The relationship resumes on 26 October 2023 with the single “WELD LAADOUL”, where the credit reads “℗ 2023 BNJ City Block, under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment France SAS”. The owner position has moved back to BNJ City Block, the company that held it before CHAPITRE 1 appeared. Six releases carry that pairing, ending with the two editions of 27 on 24 November 2023.

The third phase opens on 23 October 2024 with “DIPLOMATICO”, where the credit reads “℗ 2024 EGT Corporation, distributed by Sony Music Entertainment France SAS”. Three releases carry that wording, the last being the 17-track SALGOAT of 29 November 2024. No further release appears for 385 days. When the catalogue resumes on 19 December 2025 with “BOOMX3”, the owner is still EGT Corporation and the Sony entity is still there, but the wording has changed to “under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment France SAS”. Six releases carry that form, through SALGOAT (Vol. 2) of 4 June 2026 and SALGOAT (Vol. 2 – Extension) of 26 June 2026.

Why the wording matters

“Distributed by” and “under exclusive licence to” describe different legal relationships. A distribution credit says a company moves the product and is paid for doing so; the rights stay where they were. An exclusive licence says the owner has granted a company the exclusive right to exploit the recordings for a defined period and territory, which is a transfer of control short of a transfer of title. The owner named in both forms here is the same company, EGT Corporation, and the licensee or distributor named in both forms is the same company. Only the described function changed. No filing, registry entry, press release or statement from either party located by this desk accounts for the change. That the change coincides with a 385-day gap in releases is an observation about the dates, not a finding about a renegotiation.

What the second sources say, and where they disagree

Deezer and MusicBrainz corroborate the owner names in part and contradict Apple in several places. Deezer returns “BNJ CITY BLOCK” in the label field for SALGOAT, UPC 196872694284, where Apple’s phonogram credit names EGT Corporation. Deezer returns “EGT Corporation” for SALGOAT (Vol. 2) and SALGOAT (Vol. 2 – Extension), which agrees with Apple. Deezer returns “ElGrandeToto” for Illicit, where Apple names Chabaka. MusicBrainz returns “BNJ City Block” for SALGOAT and for “DIPLOMATICO”, again against Apple’s EGT Corporation, and “Chbk” for the two 2018 Chabaka releases. Most significantly, MusicBrainz returns “Sony Music Entertainment France” as the label for SALGOAT (Vol. 2), placing the Sony entity in the label field of a release whose delivered phonogram credit places it in the licensee position behind EGT Corporation.

A label field and a phonogram credit are not the same assertion. The label field records who the service considers the releasing imprint; the phonogram credit records who the deliverer asserts owns the sound recording. Where they diverge, this record treats the phonogram credit as the stronger evidence of the owner position and records the divergence rather than resolving it.

Sony’s own published material

Sony Music France maintains an artist page for him, fetched 9 October 2026, HTTP 200, with schema.org datePublished of 10 February 2022, five months before the first Sony credit appears in the metadata, and dateModified of 29 September 2026. Its own description credits Caméléon as his first album. Caméléon, dated 4 March 2021 in Apple’s catalogue, carries the credit “℗ 2021 BNJ CITY BLOCK” and names no Sony entity at all. A news item dated 22 June 2026 announcing SALGOAT (Vol. 2) runs to roughly 81 words and names no label, no rights, no territory and no term. Neither page names a Sony frontline label as his. The frontline label names that do appear in the page source belong to the site-wide label list in its footer and are not statements about this artist.

Consideration

Not disclosed. No amount, advance, royalty rate, term, option structure or equity component appears in any document located. No publishing or administration relationship is evidenced for any period of the chain, and no collecting society repertory entry for the writer share was reachable from this desk.

What could not be established

No company registration could be located for EGT Corporation, BNJ City Block or CHAPITRE 1 SPRL. The French national business register returns zero results for all three names, checked 9 October 2026. SPRL is a Belgian legal form, and the Belgian company register offers no interface this desk could query without a browser session. Morocco’s commercial register offers no public interface at all. The jurisdiction of incorporation, officers and beneficial ownership of all three named owner-position companies are therefore unknown, as is whether CHAPITRE 1 and CHAPITRE 1 SPRL are the same entity. That EGT carries the artist’s initials is an observation, not evidence of his ownership of the company.

Whether the “Chabaka” named on four 2018 masters is the same company as the Emirates-based Chabaka Music that Universal Music Group acquired on 30 August 2023 could not be established, and this record makes no such claim.