BMG Records Africa (Pty) Ltd
Johannesburg record label that carried the BMG name in South Africa from 1992 until the 2004 Sony BMG merger; no confirmed corporate link to today's BMG Rights Management.
- Based in
- Johannesburg, South Africa
BMG Records Africa (Pty) Ltd was the Johannesburg recorded-music operation that carried the BMG name in South Africa before the 2004 Sony BMG joint venture. MusicBrainz records a label called BMG Records Africa with area Johannesburg and a life-span of 1992 to 2004, flagged as ended.
The company appears on phonogram credits in two forms, BMG Records Africa (Pty) Ltd and BMG Africa (Pty) Limited. Credits located in Apple’s South African catalogue include “℗ 2001 BMG Records Africa (Pty) Ltd” on Judith Sephuma’s A Cry, a Smile, a Dance, “℗ 2002 BMG Africa (Pty) Limited” on Heinz Winckler’s One Step Closer, “℗ 2004 BMG Africa (Pty) Limited” on Anke Pietrangeli’s By Heart and “℗ 1998 BMG Africa (Pty) Limited” on Imvuselelo Yase Natali’s Ngibabaza. From 2006 the claiming company on those same artists’ new releases reads SBME Africa (Pty) Ltd, which is the joint-venture-era form of the entity now recorded as Sony Music Entertainment Africa (Pty) Ltd.
Four artists whose records carry this company’s credit are named under the heading “South Africa” in the press release completing Sony BMG Music Entertainment on 5 August 2004, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as Exhibit 99(i) to a Sony Corporation Form 6-K. That release states the new company was 50 per cent owned by Bertelsmann and 50 per cent owned by Sony Corporation of America, and that it excluded the parents’ music publishing, physical distribution and manufacturing businesses.
No corporate document establishing this company’s registration, shareholding or dissolution has been located. The Nigeria CAC and South African CIPC registers have no public API available to this desk, and no Sony filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that names a South African music company by name was found. The corporate relationship, if any, between this entity and today’s BMG Rights Management has not been established and is not asserted here.
