The publishing on Rema’s “Calm Down”, the most commercially significant Afrobeats song yet released, is recorded in the United States federal copyright register in the names of three parties: Michael Ovie Hunter, Mavin Global Holdings Limited, and Warner Chappell Music LTD. Each is entered with the basis “Transfer: By written agreement”. Mavin’s own address on that filing is given care of Warner Chappell’s copyright department at 777 S Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles.
That is registration PA0002435681, made on 22 September 2023 for a work published on 11 February 2022. It is a Class PA registration, covering the song as written and not the recording of it. Neither company has announced a publishing arrangement covering Mavin or Rema, and this desk found none in the Warner Chappell newsroom or in trade coverage. The full deal record, with every registration number and every caveat, is filed here.
The register also dates a handover. Across the eight registrations naming Mavin Global Holdings as a claimant, its address of record moves from Warner Chappell to Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), inside a sixty-two day window in late 2025.
Claimant, care-of, and why the difference matters#
Two different things are happening on these filings, and conflating them is the standard error.
On “Calm Down” and on “2 Sugar”, the Wizkid and Ayra Starr record registered the same day as PA0002435676, Warner Chappell Music LTD is listed as a copyright claimant in its own name. Under the Copyright Office’s own rules, a copyright claimant is either the author of the work or a party that has obtained ownership of all rights under the copyright that initially belonged to the author. A claimant entry is therefore an assertion of an ownership share. It is not a statement about administration.
On “Bloody Samaritan”, Ayra Starr’s 2021 single registered as PA0002435707, Warner Chappell is not a claimant at all. Mavin Global Holdings Limited is, its address given care of Warner Chappell Music LTD, with the rights-and-permissions contact a named employee of the Warner Chappell copyright department at a warnerchappell.com address. That is evidence of who files the paperwork and who fields licensing requests. It is evidence of administration, and this desk draws no ownership conclusion from it.
The honest summary is narrow. Warner Chappell claims an ownership share in at least two of these songs, and handled Mavin’s US filings across at least four. What percentage anybody holds is not in the register, and no other document obtained states it.
The remix is a much smaller claim than people assume#
“Calm Down (feat. Selena Gomez)” has its own registration, PA0002544568, made on 8 January 2024 for a work published on 25 August 2022, and it names PA0002435681 as the previous registration. Its sole copyright claimant is SMG Tunes, care of UMPG in Franklin, Tennessee.
The important part is what it excludes. Authorship on the application is lyrics only, credited to Selena Gomez. Material excluded from the claim is stated as music and lyrics. The remix adds a claim over newly written lyrics and touches nothing in the underlying song.
The commercial phonogram line on the remix single reads “℗ 2022 Mavin Global Holdings Ltd / Jonzing World Entertainment / SMG Music LLC, under exclusive licence to Interscope Records”. That is the master side, and “under exclusive licence” is doing real work in that sentence: it describes a licence, not an assignment. This desk has separately documented who owns Rema’s masters and the contradiction between Virgin and Interscope in his distribution credit.
You can date the move, and it trails the acquisition by a year#
The 2023 filings on “Calm Down”, “2 Sugar” and “Bloody Samaritan” all place Mavin care of Warner Chappell Music LTD in Los Angeles. So does “SOWETO (WITH DON TOLIVER, REMA & TEMPOE)”, registered as PA0002551614 on 25 July 2025, where Mavin’s address is given care of WC Music Corp. at the same street address. WC Music Corp. is the Warner Chappell US entity, so the corporate name changes while the building does not.
Then, on 25 September 2025, “BUBALU” is registered as PA0002561534 with Mavin Global Holdings Ltd. recorded care of UMPG at 1550 W McEwen Drive in Franklin. “Time N Affection” follows on 5 November 2025 and “VILLAIN” on 30 March 2026, both at the same Universal address, both with UMPG as the rights-and-permissions contact. On all three, Divine Ikubor, Rema’s legal name, is also a claimant at that Universal address in his own name rather than through the label.
Sixty-two days separate the last Warner filing from the first Universal one. That dates the filing behaviour, not the agreement behind it, which could have been signed considerably earlier.
Set that against the corporate timeline. Universal Music Group’s vehicle UMG SPV Holdings Limited acquired the issued share capital of Mavin Global Holdings Limited on 31 May 2024, a date established from the UK persons with significant control register and the audited group accounts, and recorded here in full. Mavin’s US publishing filings kept running through Warner Chappell entities for roughly fourteen months after that. That is not unusual in itself. Administration terms run to a fixed period and a collection window, and they do not end because a label’s shares change hands. But it is the first dated public evidence that the two sides of the Mavin business were not moving together.
A third document that agrees with neither#
Search the register for the album that contains “Calm Down” and exactly one registration comes back.
SR0001010023, “Works Published on the Album Rave & Roses Ultra”, is a group registration of twenty sound recordings filed on 24 June 2024. Its date of first publication for the album is given as 28 April 2023 and its nation of first publication as the United States. Track four is “Calm Down”. Track fifteen is “Calm Down Remix”.
Its sole copyright claimant is recorded as “Amschel Mayer James de Rothschild II, 1976- . Address: 77 S Washington Street, Seattle, WA, 98104, United States”, with rights and permissions given as Amschel Records LLC at the same address. He is also recorded on the application as an author of the sound recordings, under a pseudonym, alongside Rema, Selena Gomez on track fifteen and Chris Brown on track six. No Mavin, Jonzing World, Virgin or Universal entity appears anywhere on the document.
The commercial credit says something else. The phonogram line on the album reads “℗ 2023 Mavin Records / Jonzing World”, and MusicBrainz independently records the release labels as Mavin Records and Jonzing World, dated 27 and 28 April 2023. Those two sources agree with each other and disagree with the register.
A register search on the same claimant name returns twenty-five registrations, all in Class SR. The album titles among them include “Certified Loverboy”, “Anti”, “Care Package”, “The Marathon Continues” and “Almost Healed”.
The Copyright Office examines applications for formal sufficiency. It does not investigate competing ownership claims and it does not decide who owns anything. A certificate is prima facie evidence of the facts stated in it only where registration was made within five years of first publication, and even then a court decides what weight to give it and the presumption can be rebutted. This piece makes no allegation of wrongdoing, bad faith or intent against any named person. This desk did not contact the claimant, could not establish the basis of the claim, and could not establish whether it has been challenged or whether the Office has since corrected or cancelled the record.
One further fact sits alongside it. A register search on “Mavin Global Holdings” returns ten registrations, eight of them compositions. The only two sound recording entries are Ayra Starr features on other artists’ releases carrying Universal ISRC prefixes. This desk found no Class SR registration filed by Mavin or Jonzing World over their own catalogue.
What could not be established#
No terms, no price, no advance, no royalty rate, no contract term and no territory for any Mavin publishing agreement appears in any document obtained, and this desk publishes no figure. The ownership splits between Warner Chappell, Mavin and the individual writers are not in the register. Whether the Warner Chappell arrangement subsists today cannot be read off these filings, because a registration is a snapshot at the date of filing and nobody updates it when a deal ends. Whether publishing copyrights sat inside Mavin Global Holdings Limited when Universal completed its purchase could not be established from the UK filings, which do not itemise them. Society repertory databases, which would give share splits and administrator names, were not searched and are the obvious next step.
What this means for artists#
Three practical things follow, none requiring a lawyer.
First, the label deal and the publishing deal are separate transactions with separate counterparties, and they can end up at competing companies. Rema’s recorded music sits inside a group Universal bought. His songs, on the register, went through Warner Chappell for years after. If you sign a label deal assuming your songs travel with it, you are assuming something the paperwork does not say.
Second, the address on a copyright registration is a free, public signal of who is collecting on your behalf. Most African artists never see their own registrations. They are searchable by title in an afternoon, and they will tell you which company’s copyright department answers licensing requests in your name.
Third, registering your sound recordings matters more than it looks. A US registration is a cheap, dated, public assertion of ownership, and a precondition for bringing an infringement suit there. Where a catalogue has no registration of its own, the only registration that exists is whichever one somebody else filed. On the biggest Afrobeats album of the streaming era, that is exactly the position the register currently describes.