On 7 July 2023, Warner Records announced a “worldwide joint venture” with Protect the Culture, a new label founded by the American executive Marc Byers and built explicitly around African repertoire. Three years and four months later, the venture has two records to its name. Both carry the phonogram line “℗ 2023 Protect The Culture LLC/Warner Records Inc.”, a joint credit naming both companies on the master. The first, Lord Afrixana’s single “No Dey Tire”, came out the day of the announcement. The second, his EP GHANA MUST GO, came out four weeks later on 4 August 2023. Nothing carrying that credit has appeared since. The Nigerian artist named in Warner’s own launch quote, Pheelz, is not on the venture at all: his masters read “DC Talent Agency LLC, under exclusive license to Warner Records Inc.” The venture appears in no Warner Music Group regulatory filing, and is absent from the subsidiary schedule Warner filed with United States regulators on 20 November 2025. No consideration, no ownership split, no term and no rights schedule has been disclosed by either party.
What changed hands#
The announcement itself is unambiguous about the structure and silent about everything else. Warner Music Group’s own newsroom states that Protect the Culture, “a new label founded by respected music industry veteran and entrepreneur Marc Byers, has entered into a worldwide joint venture with Warner Records.”
A joint venture is not a signing and it is not an acquisition. In a label joint venture, two parties stand up a shared business, usually sharing costs, ownership of the recordings it releases, and profits, under a split that is almost never published. Warner did not buy Protect the Culture. Protect the Culture did not become a Warner subsidiary. The two entities agreed to put records out together, worldwide, and the record of what each one contributed is not public.
The same release discloses a second arrangement that is legally separate and easy to confuse with the first. Byers “will also serve as an A&R consultant for Warner Records, focusing on the vibrant African music scene. He will work closely with Steve Carless, President of A&R and Karen Kwak, EVP/Head of A&R.” That is a personal services engagement. It gives Byers a scouting remit inside Warner Records. It does not move any rights into the joint venture, and as the Pheelz position below shows, the distinction is not academic.
The joint credit is the one hard rights fact#
Press releases describe intentions. Phonogram lines describe control, because a label has to declare one, and it travels with the audio file into every store.
Both of the venture’s releases declare the same thing: “℗ 2023 Protect The Culture LLC/Warner Records Inc.” Two names, separated by a slash, with no licensing language between them. That is the form used when two companies jointly hold or jointly control the master. It is materially different from the other form Warner uses, in which one company owns and the other licenses.
Pheelz is the control case, and he is the reason this matters. Warner’s A&R leadership is quoted in the launch release crediting Byers with “the signings of breakout Nigerian artist Pheelz and afro-fusion rising star Lord Afrixana.” Read quickly, that implies two artists on a new African-facing venture. The masters say otherwise. Fourteen Pheelz collections, dated between March 2022 and October 2024, read “DC Talent Agency LLC, under exclusive license to Warner Records Inc.” One further release credits Warner Records Inc. alone. Not one of the fifteen names Protect The Culture LLC.
So the Pheelz relationship belongs to Byers’ consultancy, not to the venture’s rights. He was found, not folded in. Citing him as a Protect the Culture artist, which is the natural misreading of the press release, would be wrong. The venture’s roster, on the evidence of the masters, is one artist.
That artist is Lord Afrixana, described by Warner as a Grammy-nominated, “Ghana-born Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter.” His catalogue before the venture ran through other companies entirely: two features from 2021 and February 2023 credit Epic Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, and a 2020 release credits Mad Fatti Inc and Create Music Group Inc. The Warner joint venture was a change of partner, not a first deal.
Two records, then nothing#
The clearest finding in this file is also the most uncomfortable to report, because it is a negative. Lord Afrixana kept releasing music. The venture’s credit did not follow him.
“Jingili Bells”, released 13 December 2023, four months after the EP, reads “℗ 2023 Googo recordz”. “Kelewele”, released 14 November 2025, reads “℗ 2025 NEVERTOOMUCH”. Neither names Protect the Culture or Warner Records.
Be precise about what that does and does not establish. It establishes that the venture’s phonogram credit stopped appearing after 4 August 2023, and that the only artist it ever released has since put out records under other phonogram owners. It does not establish that the joint venture has been terminated, wound up or abandoned. Joint ventures can sit dormant for years while the paper stays live. Neither party has announced an ending, and Warner’s newsroom carries no follow-up of any kind. Whether the venture is still operative could not be established.
The entity itself is thinly documented#
Here the desk ran out of road, and it is worth saying exactly where.
“Protect The Culture LLC” is known to us from one place: the phonogram line on two records. It is tempting to read that “LLC” as proof of an American company, and we are not going to, because the same roster contains a worked example of why the inference fails. The Pheelz credit names “DC Talent Agency LLC”. The company behind it is DC Talent Agency Ltd, a United Kingdom company incorporated on 6 December 2021 under number 13783356. The store metadata gave it a US-style suffix it does not legally have. A phonogram line is good evidence of the name a label declares, and poor evidence of where it is incorporated.
On that basis the corporate trail for Protect the Culture is thin to the point of being absent. A United Kingdom Companies House search returns no company of that name. Two American state registries, in California and New York, both refused automated queries from this server, one returning a security block and the other a flat rejection, so no state of registration could be checked. The entity has no label entry in the open rights registry we use for corroboration. Where Protect the Culture is incorporated, and under what exact legal name, could not be established.
The regulatory check is the most interesting negative. Warner Music Group’s Exhibit 21.1, the schedule of subsidiaries it filed on 20 November 2025, does not list Protect the Culture in any spelling. The same filing does separately list Africori Limited, Africori SA PTY LTD and Warner Music West Africa Limited.
That absence is not a scandal, and it should not be reported as one. A joint venture that Warner does not control is not necessarily a consolidated subsidiary, and plenty of real ventures never appear on that schedule. What the comparison does show is the difference between two ways a major can enter African music: an equity-consolidated operating company that shows up in its parent’s filings, which is what Africori and Warner Music West Africa are, and a joint venture with an individual executive, which leaves almost no corporate footprint at all.
Where the sources disagree#
Two conflicts are on the file and neither is resolved here.
On the date: Warner’s own newsroom dates the announcement 7 July 2023. Secondary distribution of the same release carries 11 July, and at least one trade outlet published on 10 July. Apple’s release date for “No Dey Tire” is 7 July 2023, which corroborates Warner’s date, so this piece uses 7 July.
On the label credit: the open rights registry credits GHANA MUST GO to Warner Records with no Protect the Culture credit at all, while the store metadata names both parties. We treat that as the registry being incomplete rather than as evidence of a different ownership position, because the phonogram line is the field the parties themselves author. It is still a disagreement, and anyone relying on registry data alone would get this venture wrong.
What this means for artists#
First, a joint venture announcement tells you almost nothing about the economics, and you should stop reading it as if it did. “Worldwide joint venture” is a structure, not a number. No split, no advance, no royalty rate and no term was disclosed here, and that is normal rather than suspicious. If you are offered a JV imprint deal, the questions that decide your outcome are the ones the press release will never answer: who funds recording, who owns the masters during and after the term, who recoups first, and what happens to the catalogue if the venture goes quiet.
Second, learn to read the two phonogram forms, because they are a free summary of your own deal. “Company A/Company B” with a slash suggests joint control. “Company A, under exclusive license to Company B” tells you A owns the master and B has the right to exploit it for a period, after which it should come back. The second form is usually better for an artist-owned entity. Check which one your releases carry, and check whether it changed.
Third, and most practically: a new imprint’s roster is what its masters say, not what its launch announcement implies. This venture was announced with two artist names attached to its founder. Only one ever appeared on its recordings. If you are deciding whether a new label has real momentum, count the records that carry its copyright line, and note the date of the last one.