On 6 June 2025, trade press announced that a new label called World Go Round had signed a global digital distribution partnership with Believe, the French distributor that also owns TuneCore. The label’s founder, Daniel Roy Carter, a British-South African former TikTok music executive, called it a platform built to take African and diaspora artist development “seriously.” Seventeen months later, the UK company behind that label does not exist. Companies House dissolved World Go Round Limited by compulsory strike-off on 3 November 2026, after the company filed nothing beyond its own incorporation paperwork in its entire registered life. No one involved has said a word about it in public.
This is a small deal by the standards of a desk that otherwise tracks nine-figure catalogue sales and major-label acquisitions. It is worth recording anyway, because it shows exactly how thin the legal infrastructure behind a “global label and artist collective” can be, even one that launches with real distribution, real releases and real artists attached, and how little visibility artists, press or the public get into what happens when that infrastructure quietly fails.
What the launch announcement actually said#
World Go Round’s launch, reported first by Music Week, named no legal entities, no financial terms and no contract length for the Believe partnership. What it did name was a roster: Zimbabwean producer Verseless, vocalist M.I.L.E., Ugandan Afrobeats artist Dolv Gvng and Dutch/Caribbean artist and producer Nvjee, with Zimbabwean artist Simba Tagz featured on the label’s planned first release. Two release dates were given: “Sorbet” by Verseless and Simba Tagz for 27 June 2025, and M.I.L.E.’s “Sunday” for 18 July 2025. Believe’s director of artist & label solutions UK, Panos Polimatidis, was quoted welcoming the deal.
A distribution partnership is a service relationship, not an ownership transfer. Believe’s job under an arrangement like this is to get recordings onto streaming services and collect revenue on the label’s behalf; nothing in the announcement, or in anything found since, suggests Believe took any stake in World Go Round’s masters, its catalogue or the company itself. The harder question, and one this desk could not resolve from any public source, is the reverse: whether World Go Round itself holds the copyright in what it released, or whether its artists kept their own masters and the label operated more as a brand and marketing umbrella. The term “artist collective” in the original announcement cuts either way, and no source checked specifies which.
What is independently confirmed is that the release happened as described. A live pull of Deezer’s catalogue on 12 November 2026 shows “Sorbet” credited to the label “World Go Round,” released 27 June 2025, under UPC 3617396221314. Apple’s own catalogue data for the same track, pulled independently, gives the identical release date. The press announcement and the streaming metadata agree with each other, which is not always the case on this beat.
The company that doesn’t exist anymore#
World Go Round Limited, UK company number 16410326, was incorporated on 25 April 2025, six weeks before the label’s public launch. Companies House’s own filing shows Daniel Roy Carter as the company’s sole director and its sole person with significant control from day one, holding 75 per cent or more of its shares and the power to appoint or remove directors alone. Its registered office was a residential-looking address in Chessington, outside London, a common setup for a small company formed quickly.
Then nothing else was filed. No confirmation statement, the basic annual filing every UK company must submit, and no accounts, ever appear in its filing history. Companies House published a first Gazette notice proposing to strike the company off on 18 August 2026, and a final notice confirming the dissolution on 3 November 2026, barely a year after it was formed and roughly fourteen months after its public launch with a major distributor. Compulsory strike-off is not something a director chooses; it is what Companies House does to a company it believes has stopped meeting its statutory obligations, after giving it a chance to object and receiving none.
Carter has not addressed this publicly in anything found by this desk, nor has Believe, nor has any artist on the roster. His LinkedIn profile, as last captured, still describes him as the label’s founder. He also controls a separate, currently active UK company, Carter Projects and Ventures Limited, a management consultancy incorporated in August 2024 with a registered address in Stevenage. That company is unconnected, on the public record, to World Go Round’s music business or its Believe relationship; it is simply evidence that Carter has not wound down every company he runs, only this one.
Why this matters more than its size suggests#
Nothing in this record suggests wrongdoing. Compulsory strike-off, by itself, is routine; small companies miss filing deadlines constantly, and Companies House strikes off thousands every year. It is also not proof that World Go Round, the label, has stopped operating: a company can let its UK filings lapse while its underlying business carries on informally, moves its rights into a different entity, or continues under an artist’s own imprint. The fact that “Sorbet” still carries the World Go Round credit on Deezer nine days after the dissolution cuts against reading this as a shutdown, without proving it isn’t one.
What the record does establish, cleanly, is a gap between the public story and the legal one. The public story is a confident launch, a named major distributor, four artists across three continents, and quotes from both sides about building something serious. The legal story is a company that was formed, launched, released music through a global distributor, and ceased to exist as a legal entity, all inside about nineteen months, without a single routine filing in between and without a single public word marking any of it beyond the original launch.
What this means for artists#
For an artist weighing a deal with any small, newly launched label, however credible its backers or however major its distributor, the practical lesson here is specific: a glossy distribution announcement tells you who gets your music onto Spotify and Apple Music. It tells you nothing about whether the company you are signing with, or releasing through, is itself in good legal standing, or will still exist in a year. Believe’s involvement in the World Go Round partnership says something real about Believe’s distribution reach; it says nothing about World Go Round Limited’s own corporate health, and nothing in Believe’s public statement suggested it was checking that either.
Artists signed to label brands rather than directly to major distributors should ask, and keep asking, a basic question most never think to ask until something goes wrong: which legal entity actually owns, or is contracted to own, my masters, and is that company still in good standing with its home country’s company register? For UK-registered labels, that answer is a free search away on Companies House. For World Go Round’s artists, had they checked on 12 November 2026, the answer would have been that the company behind their label’s name no longer exists, and nobody involved had told them so.
This desk could not establish what happens next for the label’s catalogue, who, if anyone, now administers royalties on it, or whether the Believe partnership survives the entity that signed it. Those questions remain open, and this desk will check again if any party addresses them publicly.
