Waka Music Limited, Bytetunes and Wahoo Music Hold the Copyright Line on 604 Ghanaian Recordings. Only 18 of Them State a Deal Structure.

Three company names sit on the sound recording copyright line of at least 604 distinct Ghanaian releases. Bytetunes Music carries 280, Waka Music Limited 253 and Wahoo Music 71, read across Apple Music’s Ghana storefront in September 2026. Eighteen of the Waka Music Limited releases, all by Wendy Shay or Fameye and all dated between 20 July 2023 and 30 May 2025, add six words that appear nowhere else in the 604: under exclusive license to ONErpm. An exclusive licence is a grant of rights for a term. It is not a sale. That line is the only rights structure any of the three names has stated in public. Wahoo Music’s own website lists the other two among its partners and says the company is headquartered in Singapore.

A phonogram credit, the line beginning with the circled P on every commercial release, is the copyright claim in the sound recording as delivered to a streaming service. It is not a contract and not a filing: it is a claim made by whoever delivered the file, on the day they delivered it. In most African markets no registry of recording agreements exists and no regulator is notified, so that line is the closest thing to a public rights register there is. It almost never names a licensee.

The eighteen releases that name a licensee#

Each release below was fetched directly and the credit read off the page on 17 September 2026. Deezer’s label field was read for the same releases and returns “Waka Music Limited” without the licence wording.

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Nothing else in the catalogue carries it. Kuami Eugene’s “Renaissance: Echoes of the Rockstar” reads “℗ 2026 Waka Music Limited” and stops there. Stonebwoy’s “Gidigba (Firm & Strong)” reads “℗ 2022 Waka Music Limited” and stops there. Whatever route those recordings take to the services, the credit does not say.

Three names, 604 recordings#

The scan behind these figures covered 40 Ghanaian artist names and returned 4,464 distinct releases. Every count below is a floor rather than a total, because artists outside that list were not checked.

A phonogram year is the year of the recording, not of the deal. A 2011 stamp on a credit held by a company that did not exist in 2011 is what acquired back catalogue looks like: the new owner takes the file over and the original year travels with it.

The songs the reporting named sit under a different name#

In August 2025 Ghanaian trade reporting named fourteen artists said to have leased or sold catalogue rights to Waka Music Limited, Sarkodie among them. His catalogue was checked release by release. Across 77 titles, not one carries a Waka Music Limited credit.

They carry Wahoo Music instead. “Tema” reads “℗ 2018 Wahoo Music”. “Daabi” reads “℗ 2011 Wahoo Music”. “Born 2 Win”, released this year, reads “℗ 2026 Wahoo Music”. The same applies to “Pain Killer”, the “Adonai” remix, “Brown Paper Bag” and the “Country Side” cut from Jamz, all of which Deezer also files under the label “Wahoo Music”.

The direction of that reporting was right: a company had taken the copyright line on a large slice of Sarkodie’s recorded output. The name on the line is not the name reported. Anyone checking the reported name against his actual credits would have found nothing.

What the companies say about themselves#

Wahoo Music’s website, fetched on 17 September 2026, describes the company as “a music investment firm focused on acquiring and growing catalogues that preserve Africa’s cultural legacy”, headquartered in Singapore. Its contact section lists hubs in Lagos, Abidjan and Dar es Salaam. A news item on the same site dated 1 May 2025 gives a different footprint, adding Ghana alongside Nigeria for West Africa. Only the news item includes Ghana, which is where effectively all of the catalogue carrying these credits originates.

Its partners section shows sixteen logos. Three are Bytetunes, ONErpm and WAKA Music. The rest are platforms, majors and societies, among them Spotify, Apple Music, Audiomack, Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner, BMI and PRS.

That is a partner listing published by one of the parties. It establishes that Wahoo Music publicly associates itself with Waka Music Limited, Bytetunes and ONErpm. It is not a shareholding, and nothing located establishes that any of them share an owner.

Bytetunes describes itself on its own channel as founded “by a team of African and global experts in music management and business investment” and says it “operates a fund focused on three foundational areas: Capital Investment, Catalogue Acquisition, and Building Sustainable Institutions”. It says it is based in Ghana. Wahoo Music says Singapore. Both are the companies’ own statements.

One registry entry matches a trading name. Singapore’s corporate register carries WAHOO MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT PTE. LTD., UEN 202238941N, incorporated 2 November 2022, registered address on Cecil Street, status Registered. It is the only entity on that register whose name begins with the words Wahoo Music. No document checked connects it to the credit line or the website, so the match rests on name and stated jurisdiction alone. There is no Waka Music Limited and no Bytetunes on that register at all.

Owns, licenses, distributes, administers#

Four relationships are in play and coverage of this beat tends to blur them. To own a master is to hold the copyright in the recording. To license is to let someone else exploit a recording you still own, for a term. To distribute is to move a finished recording to the services and account for the money. To administer is to register, collect and pay through on someone else’s behalf, which touches the publishing estate rather than the recording.

The eighteen credits evidence one of those: Waka Music Limited is the named phonogram owner, ONErpm the exclusive licensee, and the practical content of a credit in that form is distribution. For the other 586 releases the credit names an owner and says nothing about the route. None of the 604 says anything about publishing, because a phonogram credit never does. Those compositions are a separate estate and not one was traced.

What this means for artists#

The first thing is that “sold my catalogue” and “licensed my catalogue” are different transactions, and the difference is the whole asset. A sale moves the copyright permanently. An exclusive licence moves the right to exploit it for a term, after which it reverts. Eighteen releases here say licence in public. The conversation around these Ghanaian deals has been conducted almost entirely in the language of sale, including by artists describing their own arrangements. Both cannot be right about the same recordings.

The second is that the credit line is the only register most African artists have, and reading your own costs nothing. Open any release, read the circled P line, and check that the company named is the one you signed with, that the year is right, and that any licensee named is one you agreed to. If a name you do not recognise is sitting on your recording, that is an email to send this week.

The third is counterparty diligence. A buyer operating under more than one trading name is doing nothing improper, and consolidating catalogue across imprints is normal. But it means checking a counterparty by searching one name can under-report the relationship to zero. Ask for the registered legal name and company number before signing, not the trading name.

Did Waka Music Limited buy or license these Ghanaian recordings?#

On the only public evidence, eighteen releases by Wendy Shay and Fameye were licensed, not sold onward. Their Apple Music credit reads “Waka Music Limited, under exclusive license to ONErpm”, naming Waka Music Limited as sound recording copyright owner and ONErpm as exclusive licensee for a term. How Waka Music Limited itself acquired those masters from the artists, whether by purchase, assignment or licence, is not stated on any release and has not been established.

What is the relationship between Waka Music Limited, Bytetunes and Wahoo Music?#

Not established as common ownership. The only documented connection is that Wahoo Music’s website lists both Bytetunes and WAKA Music among sixteen named partners. No filing, register entry or statement by any of the three describes a parent, a subsidiary or a shared shareholder. They appear as three separate credit names on three separate, non overlapping groups of Ghanaian recordings.

Who holds the copyright on Sarkodie’s older recordings?#

The phonogram credit on 38 Sarkodie releases, including “Tema”, “Daabi” and “Born 2 Win”, reads “Wahoo Music”, verified on Apple Music and corroborated by Deezer in September 2026. That is the copyright claim made at delivery. It is not a filing and does not evidence what Sarkodie agreed to or was paid. No Sarkodie release checked carries a Waka Music Limited credit.

What is not established#

No consideration is known for anything described here. No advance, royalty rate, term length, minimum guarantee, reversion date or purchase price appears in any source checked, for the ONErpm licence or for any underlying catalogue acquisition. Not disclosed is the accurate answer, not a figure this desk failed to find.

The corporate identity of Waka Music Limited remains unresolved, as it was when this desk last looked. It is not on the UK register under that exact name and not on the Singapore register at all. Ghana operates no public company search, so a Ghanaian incorporation can be neither found nor ruled out.

Why the ONErpm licence wording stops after 30 May 2025 is not established. No release by either artist after that date carrying a Waka Music Limited credit was found in the scan, so the absence of the wording is not by itself evidence that the licence ended. It may have expired, been renewed under different delivery metadata, or simply not been applied to new material.

Nothing here establishes what any individual artist agreed to. A credit records what the delivering party asserted, not consent. Several artists named in last year’s reporting have publicly disputed how their arrangements were characterised, and a credit line does not resolve that.

A MusicBrainz cross-check was run for all three names on 17 September 2026 and returned no label and no release for any of them. The record here rests on Apple Music, Deezer, Singapore’s corporate register and the companies’ own published statements.