Universal Bought 70 Per Cent of Kenya’s A.I Records in 2018. Eight Years On, the Masters Still Sit in the Kenyan Company.

What changed hands: 70 per cent of the equity in the Nairobi record company that trades as A.I Records, acquired by Universal International Music B.V., Universal Music Group’s Dutch subsidiary, in a transaction reported on 4 March 2018. The founding Andrews family kept the other 30 per cent. No price was disclosed and the label’s general manager declined to give one. What did not change hands was the catalogue. The recordings stayed inside the Kenyan company, and Apple’s own catalogue still names that company as owner of the phonogram on a release dated 28 August 2026.

A share purchase, not a catalogue sale

Four reports published within 48 hours of each other in March 2018, all read directly by this desk, describe the same transaction in the same terms: Universal Music Group took a 70 per cent stake in A.I Records through its Dutch subsidiary, for an undisclosed sum, with the founding family retaining 30 per cent. They are not independent of one another. A Kenyan business daily carries the on-record quotes and reads as the originating account; three trade reports followed within a day. Two of those name the acquiring entity as Universal International Music B.V., and one gives the full legal name as Andrews International Records (Kenya) Ltd. The Kenyan report says only “its Dutch subsidiary”. No party published its own announcement, and this desk found none on Universal’s newsroom.

The distinction between the two structures matters more than it sounds. Buying a catalogue means acquiring the copyrights in specific recordings, which then sit with the buyer. Buying 70 per cent of a company means acquiring control of the entity that owns those copyrights. The copyrights do not move. The company that held them the day before holds them the day after, with a new majority shareholder.

The general manager’s account, given at the time, points at capability rather than a sale of assets: “We’ve entered into a strategic alliance…they will digitise the music and make it available to the world. We are too small to do that but they can.” He added that the label was “in the process of communicating with many artistes” and hoped to “sign contracts and begin new recordings by the end of the year.” A catalogue absorbed into a buyer’s vault does not talk about signing new artists. A company being recapitalised does.

What the copyright line says eight years later

This desk read Apple’s catalogue lookup on 31 August 2026 for every A.I Records act named in the 2018 coverage, and for others found alongside them. The phonogram credit is consistent, and it does not name Universal.

Orchestra Super Mazembe’s compilation Giants Of East Africa reads “℗ 1980 A.I Records Kenya Limited”. So do Kayembe, Atia Jo, The Original Movers, Rose Mwambe and the Afro 70 EP Penzi Lanitesa. Slim Ali & The Hodi Boys’ You Can Do It and Soul Brothers both read “℗ 1983 A.I Records Kenya Limited”.

More to the point, so do the new ones. A remix single of “Shauri Yako” credited to Orchestra Super Mazembe, dated 22 January 2020, reads “℗ 2020 A.I Records Kenya Limited”. Sweet Mother (Remastered 2026) by Slim Ali & The Hodi Boys, a four-track release dated 28 August 2026, reads “℗ 2026 A.I Records Kenya Limited”. Those are fresh phonogram claims, asserted in years when Universal has held the majority of the shares, and asserted in the Kenyan company’s name.

That is what a majority-owned subsidiary looks like from the outside. It is the expected outcome, not an anomaly, and it is worth stating plainly because the shorthand “Universal bought the label” invites the opposite inference. A credit line answers the question “which company owns this recording”. It does not answer “who owns that company”.

The comparison that shows the limit of a credit line

Universal’s East Africa unit announced a second Kenyan deal in June 2026: the purchase of the recorded catalogue of the Nairobi shop and label Melodica. Every account of that one describes a catalogue acquisition, not a share purchase. Its first release, “Mandalala” by Orchestra Grand Piza, dated 26 June 2026, reads “℗ 2026 Melodica”.

So an equity purchase and a catalogue purchase have produced credit lines that look the same: the Kenyan seller’s name, a current year, no mention of Universal. A reader working from the ℗ line alone could not tell which structure applied. Whether the Melodica line reflects a retained copyright, a licence back, or a label name carried through unchanged in the metadata is not something this desk can establish, because no party has published anything that explains it.

One detail complicates the boundary between the two catalogues. Orchestra Grand Piza appears on both sides of it: the group’s EP Zera carries “℗ 1980 A.I Records Kenya Limited”, while “Mandalala” carries the Melodica line. Nothing read for this record explains how the same band’s recordings came to sit with two different Kenyan rights holders.

Who delivers the files, which is a different question

There is one visible thread tying the A.I Records catalogue to a Universal supply chain, and it needs careful labelling, because it is a delivery artefact and not a rights statement. The artwork asset Apple serves for the 2026 Slim Ali release is named 26UMGIM96550; the 2020 “Shauri Yako” remix is 20UMGIM01901; the Melodica single is 26UMGIM79682. Identifiers of that shape are assigned on delivery, and the shared prefix indicates the files reached Apple through a Universal pipeline. This desk found no published document from Apple or Universal defining the prefix, so it is offered as an indication of who distributes, not evidence of who owns. Here, those two questions have different answers.

What the registry holds, which is not much

MusicBrainz, the open rights registry, lists Orchestra Super Mazembe as a Kenyan artist and holds four releases for the group: a 1982 German pressing on Virgin, two editions of Giants of East Africa on Earthworks dated 2001 and 2002, and a 2013 release on Stern’s Africa. None is credited to A.I Records, and the registry’s label index returns no entry for the Kenyan company, only unrelated labels using similar names. The registry holds the European licensed reissues that carried this music abroad in the vinyl and compact disc era. It does not hold the Kenyan originals, and it does not name whoever licensed those reissues.

Apple’s catalogue is not internally consistent either. The two volumes of Mazembe @ 45RPM carry different phonogram owners: Volume 1 reads “℗ 2013 Sterns Africa”, Volume 2 reads “℗ 1979 A.I. Records (Kenya) Ltd.” Nothing read here explains the difference.

What could not be established

Kenya’s Business Registration Service portal resolves but is login-gated, and the eCitizen sign-in it depends on returned HTTP 403 to this server, so the 70/30 split could not be checked against a company register. The current directors and share capital of Andrews International Records (Kenya) Ltd are not confirmed here. No source states a territory, a term, a price, an advance or a royalty rate. A Kenyan newspaper tribute to the founder, which search results indicate sets out a 1970 joint venture with RCA Records as the origin of the Andrews International name, returned HTTP 403 and was not read, so the founding date is given only as the 1950s.

There is also an unexplained third name in the catalogue. At least three Slim Ali & The Hodi Boys titles dated 2011 carry a phonogram credit naming Next Music, one of them jointly as “AI Records/ Next Music”. Nothing read for this record explains what Next Music is, or whether it still holds anything.

The closest thing to post-deal corroboration, short of a filing, is a June 2019 Kenyan business report on the group Ethic Entertainment signing to A.I Records, which describes the label as “a subsidiary of Universal Music Group” and as “an International recording, publishing and distribution music company based in Kenya”. That fits the 2018 accounts, but it is still a third-party description, not a company document.

What this means for artists

If your recordings sit with an African independent, the most consequential thing that can happen to you may never show up on your credit line. A major can acquire control of your label without a single one of your masters moving, and every ℗ line on everything you have released will read exactly as it did the week before. Your counterparty is still the same company. Who instructs that company is not.

Two practical consequences follow. First, ask what happens to your agreement on a change of control of the label, and get the answer before signing rather than after. Reversion rights, approval rights and audit rights are written against a named company, and a sale of that company’s shares does not trigger them unless the contract says it does. Second, do not read a copyright line as a map of corporate ownership. It states which legal person owns the recording, and it is usually accurate about that. It says nothing about who owns that legal person, and in a market with no free public company register, that second layer is very hard for an artist to see at all.

The upside here is real. A catalogue that spent decades reachable outside East Africa mainly through European specialist reissues is now on the platforms under its own name, still held by the company that made it, with the founding family holding a third of that company. For a family label, that is a materially different outcome from selling the masters. It is simply not the outcome the phrase “Universal bought the label” usually conjures.