Odeal’s masters are credited to OVMBR, the imprint he founded and named, and since June 2024 that credit has shared the line with LVRN Records, the Atlanta label. Underneath the credit sit two British companies with the same name and the same London address, and the UK register puts the artist in two very different positions in them. In the one incorporated in December 2024 he holds 75 per cent or more and can hire and fire the directors. In the one registered for sound recording, incorporated in 2020, the register records him as owning no more than half.
That is the finding, and it is worth being precise about what it is not. It is not evidence that anyone took anything from him. Founders dilute themselves deliberately all the time, and a 25 to 50 per cent band on a register is a disclosure threshold, not a grievance. What it is, is the only publicly documented number attached to the ownership of a company whose name appears on the recordings of one of the fastest-rising British-Nigerian artists of the past two years.
Five credit lines in nine years#
The phonogram line, the one that begins with the circled P, is the closest thing recorded music has to a deed. It names who claims the sound recording. Read across Odeal’s catalogue on 29 September 2026, it changes five times.
In 2017 his singles “Need a Girl” and “Madting” carry “665121 Records DK”. That is not a label in any meaningful sense: it is the auto-generated imprint name a self-serve distribution platform assigns when an artist uploads without supplying one. In 2018 the credit becomes REGAL SOUNDS MANAGEMENT, shortened to RSM on one release. In November 2020 and November 2021 a rights registry records his two OVMBR-branded projects, “Roses” and “Hits No Mrs”, against Warner Records and Warner Records UK.
Then, in September 2022, the credit reads simply “Ovmbr”. It stays OVMBR alone through 2023, across “Be Easy”, “Repercussions” and “Thoughts I Never Said”. For roughly two years, an artist who had been on a major’s credit line was carrying his own.
From 14 June 2024, starting with “ONOME”, the line becomes “OVMBR/LVRN Records (Love Renaissance)” and stays that way through “Lustropolis”, “You’re Stuck” with Summer Walker and “The Fall That Saved Us”. On the 2026 releases, “Coming Home” and the project “For A Good Time…”, the order flips: LVRN now reads first.
The back catalogue moved too#
The most concrete evidence that something structural happened in 2024 is not in the new releases. It is in the old ones.
Six recordings first issued between 2017 and 2022 now carry a 2024 phonogram year and the joint OVMBR and LVRN credit: “Hold You Up”, first out in September 2017; “Blessings” from October 2019; “Pause It” and “Sage”, both from early 2020; “Coffee (Don’t Read Signs)” from May 2022; and “Kainji Dam” from July 2022. A phonogram year later than the recording’s first release is the fingerprint of a re-delivery. Someone pulled those files and put them back into the stores under a new credit.
That tells you the arrangement reached backwards over work already made, not just forwards over work to come. It does not tell you that ownership changed hands, and no party has said that it did.
Two companies, one name, one address#
OVMBR LTD, company number 12481117, was incorporated on 25 February 2020 and is registered under SIC code 59200, sound recording and music publishing activities. OVMBR SOUNDS LIMITED, company number 16138139, was incorporated on 16 December 2024, a month after “Lustropolis”, and is registered under SIC code 93290, other amusement and recreation activities not elsewhere classified, a code consistent with the live events side of the brand. Both sit at 2nd Floor, Northumberland House, 303-306 High Holborn, London. Both were active when checked.
The brand itself is not hiding. OVMBR runs a site at ovmbr.com billing itself as “The official home of OVMBR” and “Odeal’s music, merch, and upcoming tour dates”, and expanding the name in its footer: “Our Variances Make Us Bold & Relentless.” It sells merchandise and lists tour dates. What it does not carry is a company number, a registered address, or a word about who releases the records.
Hillary Dennis Udanoh, born December 1999, a Nigerian and British national, is the sole serving director of both and the only active person with significant control of either. Sony Music Publishing’s own December 2025 announcement gives Odeal’s legal name as Hillary Dennis Udanoh, and general reference sources give the same December 1999 birth date. That match of name, birth month, nationality and business activity is the basis for the identification here. No single document states the stage name and the company number together.
In OVMBR SOUNDS LIMITED his registered nature of control is ownership of 75 per cent or more of the shares, 75 per cent or more of the voting rights, and the right to appoint or remove directors. That is unambiguous control. In OVMBR LTD it is “ownership of shares, more than 25 per cent but not more than 50 per cent”. The register does not say who holds the rest, and because nobody else appears on that company’s list of people with significant control, any other holders each sit below the 25 per cent notification threshold or are not individually notifiable.
OVMBR LTD also had a second founder. Oluwabukola David Kamson, born November 1997, was appointed director at incorporation alongside Udanoh and was registered as a person with significant control from the same day. He resigned and ceased to hold control on 1 March 2023, a few months after the credit line switched to OVMBR alone.
Kamson’s registered nature of control was the same band as Udanoh’s: more than 25 per cent and not more than 50 per cent. Two founders in one band reads like a roughly even split. What matters is that Udanoh was notified in that band on 25 February 2020 and is still recorded in it, three and a half years after his co-founder ceased to hold control. A controller only files again on crossing a band boundary, so shares can move inside a band invisibly. But no notification has been filed showing Udanoh crossing 50 per cent.
Which of the two companies is the entity named in the phonogram line cannot be established. The credit says “OVMBR” and stops there.
Publishing is a different asset#
On 8 December 2025 Sony Music Publishing announced that it had signed Odeal to what it calls “a worldwide publishing agreement”. The announcement quotes its Senior Director, Creative A&R, Shauni Caballero, and quotes Odeal saying he is “excited to be working with Shauni and a team I trust and who genuinely believe in what I’m building”.
What the announcement does not do is say what kind of agreement it is. A publisher can take an assignment of copyright in the songs, which is ownership, or it can be appointed administrator, which is a service over rights the writer keeps. Those are different transactions with different reversion consequences, and the announcement uses neither word. It also states no term, no territory carve-out and no money. Sony Music Publishing’s own website returned a JavaScript shell with no readable article to this desk on 29 September 2026, so the wording quoted here comes from the verbatim text of the release as distributed.
None of this touches the masters. Songs and recordings are separate properties, and the most common error in music reporting is to collapse them.
What this means for artists#
Three things generalise past this one artist.
First, the phonogram line is evidence and announcements are not. Odeal’s catalogue reads year by year without a single press release: self-serve upload, a management imprint, a major, two years carrying his own name, then a partnership. If you want to know who claims a recording, read the credit on the newest release.
Second, a joint credit is not a split. “OVMBR/LVRN Records” tells you both parties are claimed rights holders. It tells you nothing about who holds what percentage, who paid for the recording, who controls licensing, or what happens at the end of the term. Artists routinely read a co-credit as a partnership of equals. It may be, and it may not, and the credit will never say.
Third, and most practically: the company matters as much as the contract. Odeal runs two companies under one brand and his position in them is completely different. The one carrying the recording activity is the one where the register puts him at no more than half. Anyone building an artist-owned imprint should understand that the entity will own the catalogue for decades, that its share register is where the real deal lives, and that the public record will show the shape of it whether or not anyone announces anything.
Limits of this record. Phonogram credits for 36 Odeal releases were read directly from Apple’s catalogue on 29 September 2026. The 2020 and 2021 Warner credits come from a rights registry only: no phonogram line was read for either release and no announcement of a Warner signing or of its end was located, so that period is not reported here as a confirmed deal. The OVMBR brand site at ovmbr.com, read the same date, establishes the brand is Odeal’s own but publishes no corporate or rights detail. Corporate facts for both companies were read directly from UK Companies House on 29 September 2026. Companies House does not check the accuracy of what is filed with it. The identification of Hillary Dennis Udanoh with Odeal rests on a match of name, birth month and year, nationality and business activity across the register and the December 2025 publishing announcement. Not established by any source reviewed, and not disclosed by any party: the structure of the relationship between OVMBR and LVRN, which OVMBR company contracts, who holds the balance of OVMBR LTD, the distributor, and every financial term.
