The Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangaré, Orchestra Baobab, Cheikh Lô and Tony Allen recordings released on World Circuit are owned by a London company with two directors and no staff. That company has belonged to BMG since 2018. Its own audited accounts name Bertelsmann as the ultimate controlling party, value the catalogue at nothing, and book four thousand pounds of revenue from the entire world outside Britain, Europe and North America.
World Circuit built one of the most consequential African catalogues in recorded music: Talking Timbuktu, In the Heart of the Moon, Specialist in All Styles, and the Buena Vista Social Club records that reorganised what the global market would pay attention to. Who owns all of that has never been set out here. It is set out now, from the register and the accounts. The full deal record is here.
Who owns it, in one line#
World Circuit Limited, registered in England and Wales as company number 02072285, owns the masters and the publishing copyrights. World Circuit Limited is wholly owned by BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited, company number 06705101. Note 17 of World Circuit’s audited accounts for the year ended 31 December 2025 states that “the ultimate controlling party and parent company is Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA”.
That is a three-link chain, and every link is in a filed document rather than an announcement.
The register dates the deal ten days before the press release#
BMG announced the acquisition on 15 October 2018. The UK persons with significant control register, which is the statutory record of who controls a company, gives a different date: BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited was notified as controlling World Circuit Limited on 5 October 2018, with more than 75 per cent of shares, more than 75 per cent of voting rights, and the right to appoint and remove directors.
Three other things are recorded on that same 5 October. Nicola O’Donnell ceased as a person with significant control and resigned as company secretary. Nicholas David Gold, a director since before 11 December 1991 and the man who built the label, resigned as a director. And four BMG-side directors were appointed in one go: Hartwig Masuch, Peter Stack, Paul Jonathan Wilson and Maximilian Dressendoerfer.
None of that is irregular. Control passes when the paperwork completes; publicity follows. It is recorded because the announcement is what everybody quotes and the register is what is load-bearing.
On Gold, the two records do not conflict. BMG’s announcement said he “will join BMG to help further develop the catalogue with new projects”; the register says he left World Circuit’s board that day. Both can be true. What his BMG role was, and whether he still holds it, could not be established.
Owns and administers. Not distributes.#
World Circuit Limited’s accounts state that the company “owns and administers rights to all forms of recorded music, exploits and markets these compositions and receives royalties or fees for their use”. The revenue note defines royalty licensing income as arising from “the use by a third party of the copyrights and masters rights on musical works owned or administered by the Company”.
So: it owns, and it administers. It licenses to third parties, which is how the money comes in. Nothing in the accounts, the register or the announcement describes it as a distributor, names a distributor acting for it, or names a direct relationship with any streaming service. We checked and could not establish one, so none is claimed. The distinction is not pedantry: this desk has shown Kobalt administering a catalogue it does not own, and Fela Kuti’s masters owned by his estate and merely licensed out.
The structure matters too. BMG bought the company, not the copyrights one by one. World Circuit Limited was never dissolved or absorbed: it is still active, still files its own audited accounts, and the rights still sit inside it. That is also why the price is invisible. The shares changed hands above the company, so the company’s own books never recorded a purchase. The consideration was not disclosed in 2018 and no filing reviewed discloses it now.
The catalogue is on the balance sheet at nothing#
At 31 December 2025, World Circuit Limited’s only intangible asset is £11,000 of what the accounts call development expenditure: ancillary content and graphic design, useful life 1.5 to 2 years. That is artwork. The catalogue of recordings itself carries no value at all.
This is ordinary accounting rather than a judgement about the music. Rights acquired by a parent are generally recognised in the parent’s consolidated accounts, not pushed down into the subsidiary. The consequence is still worth stating: the only public filing specific to this catalogue places no number on it.
Nor can anything be said about individual records. The accounts disclose management’s judgement that “separately identifiable cash flows can only be reliably measured at the Company level”, having explicitly considered and rejected measuring at individual song level or individual catalogue level. There is no filed figure for what any single African recording earns.
Four thousand pounds#
The accounts analyse revenue by country of destination. For 2025, on total revenue of £2,174,000: United Kingdom £214,000, North America £582,000, Europe £1,374,000, and Rest of the World £4,000. The 2024 figure for Rest of the World was also £4,000.
Read it carefully before reading it loudly. “Country of destination” records where the paying licensee sits. It is not a map of where the artists live, and it is not a statement of what any artist was paid: royalties reach artists through the advances and accruals elsewhere in the accounts, not through this line.
What it does show is where the commercial counterparties are. A catalogue made in Bamako, Dakar, Lagos, Khartoum and Johannesburg is licensed almost entirely to buyers in Europe and North America. Roughly 0.18 per cent of the revenue on these recordings is booked to customers outside those markets plus the UK. For anyone arguing that African catalogue should be monetised inside Africa, that is the number. The same pull shows when Sony Music France bought Lusafrica, the label holding Cesária Évora’s catalogue.
One movement in that table is unexplained. UK revenue fell from £934,000 to £214,000 while Europe rose from £780,000 to £1,374,000. The accounts give no reason. A reclassification is plausible, but it is not stated, so it is not asserted.
The registry knows more African countries than the announcement did#
BMG’s 2018 release described a catalogue with artists “from countries including Cuba, Colombia, Spain, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal”. Four African countries.
MusicBrainz, browsed against the World Circuit label on 8 October 2026, returns 217 releases and 62 distinct credited artists. Resolving those artists individually, 22 of them sit in African territories across ten countries: Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Mauritania, Sudan, South Africa, Zimbabwe, DR Congo, Algeria and Guinea. Sudan alone contributes Abdel Gadir Salim, Abdel Aziz El Mubarak and Mohammed Gubara. South Africa contributes Hugh Masekela and Bheki Mseleku.
Six African countries in the catalogue went unnamed by the company buying it. And BMG’s current corporate boilerplate, the paragraph appended to its announcements, lists fifteen heritage names it represents. Not one of them is African.
What this means for artists#
Your counterparty can change without your deal changing. Nobody signed to World Circuit signed to Bertelsmann. Yet the chain above those contracts moved in 2018, moved again on 15 June 2026 when the controlling entry on BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited’s own register changed, and moved again on 1 September 2026 when BMG and Concord combined into a company owned 67 per cent by Bertelsmann and 33 per cent by affiliates of Great Mountain Partners. An artist agreement normally survives intact. Knowing who sits at the top still matters, because it determines who decides.
Ask which entity, not which brand. “BMG” is a brand covering several companies. The one that controls this catalogue is 06705101. The one employing the staff is a different number again: World Circuit Limited has no employees and is recharged for everything. If your contract names a brand rather than a registered number, you do not know who your counterparty is.
Unrecouped balances are visible in aggregate. World Circuit’s accounts carry artist and writer advances of £1,364,000 after a provision of £830,000, following a prior year restatement that increased advances by £1,073,000 and the associated provision by £855,000. No artist is named, so no individual position can be read from it. But audited accounts are themselves leverage: if your catalogue sits inside a UK company, its filings are public and free, and they tell you the shape of the business your royalties come out of.
What could not be established#
The price BMG paid. The announcement gives none and no filing discloses one.
Whether BMG still publishes its own 2018 announcement. The original URL returns HTTP 404. The text here comes from an archived capture: the acquiring party’s own wording, preserved, but no longer served by it.
How the controlling entry on the parent’s register reconciles with the announced 67/33 ownership of the combined company. Those sit at different corporate levels and the public record does not join them. No contradiction is alleged.
And one sequence, recorded without comment. The accounts were approved on 22 June 2026 and state there were “no significant post balance sheet events” since the year end. The Concord combination had been announced on 28 April 2026, and the controlling entry on the immediate parent’s register had changed on 15 June 2026. Whether either required disclosure here is a judgement for the directors and their auditor. The dates are on the public record.
