Wegz Signed With AWAL Middle East. His Own Label Still Owns the Masters.

AWAL announced its first Middle East signing on 25 September 2025: Egyptian rapper Wegz and his label Raad Records, the first exclusive regional artist to join AWAL Middle East’s new Dubai operation. Neither party has disclosed a fee, a royalty rate or a contract term. What can be checked independently, from the phonogram credit on Wegz’s own catalogue, is that Raad Records still owns his masters more than two months after the deal, on a release that came out after it was announced. AWAL’s name does not appear on it.

What was announced

Sony Music Entertainment’s artist-services division AWAL launched a Middle East operation headquartered in Dubai, run in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment Middle East. The launch was led by Issa Outa, Sony Music Middle East’s A&R director, reporting to Rami Mohsen, the market’s managing director, and working alongside Ben Akinbola, AWAL’s head of growth. The announcement named one artist: Wegz, signed through his own label, Raad Records, co-founded with Asem Tag, its chief executive, and Malik Tag, its managing director.

Trade coverage described the deal as an exclusive regional signing and reported that Wegz keeps ownership of his masters under the arrangement, with AWAL providing services rather than acquiring rights. No outlet reported a fee, an advance, a royalty split or a contract length, and none of the parties has published one since.

What the catalogue actually shows

Trade announcements describe deal structures in general terms. Phonogram credits, the copyright line a rights holder is legally required to put on a release, describe them precisely. Apple’s own catalogue metadata for Wegz’s artist page carries the credit “RAAD Records” on releases dated back to at least 2017, eight years before AWAL existed in the Middle East. That credit does not change after September 2025. Aqareb (Side B), a 12-track release dated 15 December 2025, nearly three months after the AWAL announcement, still carries the same “RAAD Records” line. No AWAL entity and no Sony Music entity appears anywhere in Wegz’s phonogram credits.

That is a different pattern from AWAL’s other verified Afrobeats signing on this site, Nigerian artist CKay. When CKay signed with AWAL in May 2025, his catalogue’s copyright line changed within weeks, to read “CKay Holdings LLC, under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings.” AWAL is named as the licensee on the record itself. On Wegz’s catalogue, AWAL is named nowhere. The distinction matters: an exclusive licence puts the licensee’s name on the copyright line because it now controls exploitation of the recording; a services or distribution arrangement, where the label keeps that control and simply pays for marketing, promotion or distribution muscle, does not require the servicer’s name to appear at all. Everything this desk can verify from the recordings themselves is consistent with the second structure, not the first, for Wegz.

This does not rule out a licence existing that has simply not yet shown up on a new release; Aqareb (Side B) could have been recorded or delivered before the AWAL relationship began to affect crediting. But on the evidence available, which is the full run of Wegz’s catalogue metadata through the most recent release this desk can find, ownership of his masters has not moved.

Who Raad Records is

Raad Records describes itself, and is described by MENA industry press, as an artist- and employee-owned independent label. A February 2026 label profile on the platform Harfan Harfan lists five other acts on its roster besides Wegz: Amaka Jaji, Shams, Zad, El Nashmy and GAZZZZ. It is not a subsidiary of a major, and no source ties its ownership to Sony Music, AWAL or any outside investor. This record treats Raad Records, not Wegz personally, as the deal party, because it is the named rights-holding entity on his catalogue and the entity trade coverage credits as the label side of the AWAL agreement.

The regional context

The signing was AWAL’s entry point into a market Sony Music’s own trade partners describe as the fastest-growing in the recorded-music business: Middle East and North Africa revenues rose 22.8 percent year on year in 2024, with streaming accounting for more than 99 percent of the total. Sony already has a Middle East operating company on the ground; this deal pairs that local infrastructure with AWAL’s artist-services model, tested first in North America and Europe, for a regional roster that starts with one act.

What this means for artists

For an Egyptian or wider MENA artist watching this deal, the headline is not the brand name attached to it. It is the structure. Wegz did not sign his masters over to a major or to AWAL; on the evidence in his own catalogue, his label kept them. What he appears to have bought, or been offered, is distribution reach and marketing muscle from a Sony-backed operation entering a market it has identified as high-growth, without giving up the copyright that determines who gets paid when a song is sold, synced or sampled decades from now.

That is a meaningfully different trade than the one CKay made with the same company four months earlier, where the licence itself is named on the record. Artists and label owners negotiating with AWAL, or with any artist-services division of a major, should ask the same question this record had to answer from public metadata alone: does the deal put the servicer’s name on the copyright line, or does it not? The answer changes who controls the master if the relationship ends, and it is not something a press release reliably states either way.

Limits of this record: neither party has disclosed the commercial terms of this deal, and this desk has not seen the contract. The absence of AWAL’s name from Wegz’s post-deal phonogram credits is strong evidence of a services or distribution structure rather than a licence, but it is not a certainty; a licence agreement could exist that has not yet been reflected in a new release’s crediting. This record does not assert a company location for Raad Records beyond Egypt, where all corroborating trade and roster coverage places it; a separate, apparently unrelated label using a similar web domain and describing itself as Berlin-based could not be confirmed or ruled out as connected, and no website is cited for Raad Records in this desk’s directory entry for that reason.