Tems Signed to RCA Records and Since ’93 in 2021. Her Pre-Signing Catalogue Still Sits With Her Own UK Company.

Tems’ catalogue carries two different owners depending on the year. Her 2020 recordings, released before any label deal, still carry the copyright line of her own company, The Leading Vibe UK Limited. Everything she has released since September 2021, when she signed to RCA Records and Since ’93, carries a different line: RCA Records/Since ’93, a Sony Music Entertainment label. The masters did not stay with Tems. They moved to the label, and the phonogram credits on her own releases are the record of it.

What Sony actually announced

On 16 September 2021, Sony Music Canada published a press release confirming that Tems, born Temilade Openiyi, had signed with Since ’93/RCA Records, days after she released her second EP, If Orange Was a Place. RCA Chairman and CEO Peter Edge was quoted by name: “We’re excited to welcome the immensely talented Tems to the RCA fold and embark on this new chapter with her alongside Since ’93.” Since ’93 co-president Glyn Aikins added his own framing of the structure: “This unique partnership between Since 93 and RCA in the US to support Tems is a clear testament to our joint commitment to amplifying Tems’ message far and wide.”

Neither executive, nor the release itself, stated whether the deal was a licence, a distribution arrangement or a standard recording contract that hands the label ownership of new masters. Trade coverage at the time called it a “record deal” without settling the question either. The releases that followed did.

The copyright line, before and after

Tems’ debut EP, For Broken Ears, came out independently on 25 September 2020, a year before the RCA signing. Its phonogram credit, verified directly on Apple Music, reads “℗ 2020 Leading Vibe Ltd.” The same credit appears on the singles that preceded it, “These Days” and “Damages,” both released earlier that year. Leading Vibe Ltd is not a marketing name. UK Companies House lists The Leading Vibe UK Limited as company number 12791380, incorporated 4 August 2020, three weeks before the EP dropped. Its sole officer, listed as a Nigerian national appointed the same day the company was formed, is Temilade Openiyi, Tems’ legal name. No one else has ever held a director’s position at the company, and no resignation is on file.

Everything Tems has released since the RCA signing carries a different credit. Her debut album, Born in the Wild (7 June 2024), is marked “℗ 2024 RCA Records/Since 93′” on Apple Music, a line independently confirmed on MusicBrainz’s rights registry, which lists both RCA and Since ’93 as label credits on the release. Her most recent project, the EP Love Is a Kingdom, arrived as a surprise release on 21 November 2025 carrying the identical “℗ 2025 RCA Records/Since 93′” line, and Sony Music Canada’s own announcement for that EP describes it as arriving “via RCA Records/Since ’93.” Nothing checked for this record shows the pre-2021 catalogue, the one still credited to Leading Vibe, ever changing hands. It appears to remain exactly where it started.

That makes Tems’ arrangement structurally different from several of her Nigerian peers whose catalogues this desk has already traced. Wizkid’s masters sit with his own company, Starboy Entertainment, under an exclusive licence to RCA. CKay’s masters sit with his own company, CKay Holdings, under an exclusive licence to AWAL. Burna Boy’s masters sit with his own company, with Atlantic holding a licence that excludes Africa. In each of those cases the major label distributes and the artist’s own company owns. Tems’ post-2021 masters run the other way: the label owns, and no artist-controlled company sits between her and the copyright on new work.

What Since ’93 actually is

The credit “RCA Records/Since ’93” names two entities, not one. Since ’93 launched in 2017 as a UK label under Sony Music Entertainment, run by co-presidents Riki Bleau and Glyn Aikins and described in UK trade press at launch as a joint venture with Sony rather than a wholly owned imprint. It sits inside Sony’s RCA Label Group UK alongside RCA proper and Ministry of Sound, and its roster now includes Cat Burns, Aitch and, alongside Tems, two other African-diaspora signings: South African-raised singer Tyla and Nigerian rapper Shallipopi. The distinction matters for anyone trying to name the exact rights holder on a Tems master: it is Since ’93 and RCA jointly, under the umbrella of Sony Music Entertainment, not RCA alone and not a Bleau-Aikins company acting independently of Sony.

What could not be established

This record covers master recordings only. Song publishing, the separate right in the composition itself rather than the recording, is a different relationship, administered by a different kind of company, and this desk found no primary document naming who administers it for Tems today. The closest thing to a lead was a music-industry executive’s own biography, which credits him with signing Tems while he worked in A&R at Sony Music Publishing, and Sony Music Publishing’s own 2025 year-end commentary naming her among the writers it worked with that year. Neither is a signing announcement, a registry entry or a filing, and this record does not claim a publishing deal on the strength of them. If Tems’ songwriting is formally administered by Sony Music Publishing, Kobalt or anyone else, it has not been announced anywhere this desk could find, and that gap is recorded here rather than filled with an inference.

What this means for artists

The lesson in Tems’ catalogue is not that major-label deals are bad, or that Wizkid’s structure is the only good one. It is that “signed to a major label” describes a spectrum, and the only place that spectrum resolves precisely is the phonogram credit on the release itself, not the press release announcing the deal. Two Nigerian artists can both be described in headlines as having “signed with RCA” and end up on opposite sides of a master-ownership line: one keeping the copyright in a company they control and licensing distribution outward, the other handing the copyright to the label in the ordinary way a major-label contract works. Reading the credit, not the announcement, is the only way to know which one actually happened. It is also worth noting what a deal like this does not touch: Tems’ own earlier catalogue, built before she had label leverage, remains hers on paper today, exactly as it was filed in 2020, regardless of what she has signed since.