AudioSalad Alternative: Distribution and API Prices Published

Short answer: AudioSalad and LabelGrid sell the same shape of thing, described in their own FAQ as “a digital media and metadata management platform, delivery provider and distribution company”. What differs is how you buy it. AudioSalad is one platform, reached through their enquiry form and priced in the reply. LabelGrid sells three products you buy separately, with every distribution plan and every API tier priced on the pricing page; Imprint, our white-label portal, is scoped and quoted at onboarding. Every AudioSalad value in the table below comes from one of their own published pages.

AudioSalad is “a proud member of the DDEX Consortium” and LabelGrid is not, so take their standards credential at face value. On the versions themselves, their FAQ states that AudioSalad “currently supports DDEX ERN specifications 3.4.1, 3.71, 3.8.2. (with version 4.3 under development)”, while LabelGrid supports ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2. They hold the seat at the table where the specifications are written, and we ship the newer message versions, by their own account of their own roadmap.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

Yours on your own DSP deals, on Custom Distribution and the API tiers

Free-trial days on self-serve distribution plans

Each AudioSalad value below is taken from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read them. Nine distinct documents were readable on 23 September 2026, and three of the URLs we asked for turned out to be fragments of a single services page, so one witness covers their white label, their API and their distribution rather than three. A dimension those nine pages do not state is left out rather than guessed at.

Each of the 11 AudioSalad values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: audiosalad.com/faq/, audiosalad.com/payments-account-setup-help/, audiosalad.com/services/#white-label. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

Both companies meter the platform fee by catalogue size. Their FAQ says so plainly: “We have pricing tiers based on the number of assets under management”, and ours works the same way, so growing into a bigger bill is not a peculiarity of theirs. What differs is where the numbers live. Their FAQ answers “How much does AudioSalad Cost?” with “Please contact us for pricing details and information about our distribution deals”, and their nine distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not state a figure, a currency symbol or a rate. We publish the plan prices, the track and label boundaries each tier steps up at, and the per-track overage rates on the tiers that carry one, which is what you need to work out next year’s invoice rather than this month’s.

You can act on that without speaking to anyone: start a self-serve plan on a seven-day trial, or read the REST documentation. If you would rather be walked through it, their FAQ offers that route: “Yes we have a fully functioning demo system we would be happy to show you.”

Two honest limits on our side. Imprint is scoped and quoted at onboarding rather than published, so what this page claims about published pricing is a claim about distribution and the API ladder and not about the whole product. And a B2B account is a conversation with us too: the API tiers and third-party distribution go through onboarding screening and KYC/KYB, and the sandbox opens once a paid API plan is active.

Plan prices

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, Custom starting prices included.

What moves the bill

Track limits, label limits and per-track overage rates are published beside the plan they belong to.

Public API docs

The REST documentation reads without a sales call, and the sandbox opens once a paid API plan is active.

Quoted, and we say so

Imprint is scoped at onboarding, and the figures inside any custom deal stay with that customer.

LabelGrid Tools, our WordPress plugin, syncs releases, artists and download gates into your own site every six hours, and builds release smart links, Spotify pre-saves, gated downloads and advertising conversion events. It is available to every account at no extra cost and needs no API plan. Gated downloads and download contests are the plugin’s own; smart links and pre-saves also have endpoints on the public API, so the plugin is one route to them rather than the only one. The same catalogue is reachable from our open-source MCP server and our CLI, which run on the same public API and need an API plan.

If the catalogue is yours, the self-serve plans are the whole story and their prices are on the pricing page. You keep 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo and Basic and 90% on Pro, and the label limit rises with the plan: one on Solo, three on Basic, five on Pro. Each label carries its own profile, genres, P-line and C-line, outlet selection and statement line. Automated splits and per-artist statements start at Basic rather than Solo, which is the main reason to move up early. Every self-serve plan starts with a seven-day free trial.

What arrives with the plan is worth reading before the headline rate is. Spatial audio is one place the two companies simply match: Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters are delivered on every LabelGrid distribution plan at no extra charge, and their own FAQ lists “Dolby Atmos (Spacial Audio)” among the core formats they support, so it is not a reason to pick either of us. The rest of what the plan carries is ours to state. ISRC and UPC codes are issued automatically here as you create a release, and they are yours to keep if you later leave. YouTube Content ID registration is available on every distribution plan, with 80% of the Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals going to you and a 20% fee on that revenue. Every release is reviewed by a person for quality, metadata and rights before it goes out, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

AudioSalad will talk to a catalogue of any size, and their own enquiry form says so: the options run from “Under 100 releases” to “Over 10,000 releases” and include “We have no music – yet!”. The difference for this reader is the route rather than the size of buyer either company will talk to.

Outlets you pick

Delivery to all major DSPs, download stores and social apps, with any outlet deselectable per release.

Codes included

ISRC and UPC codes are issued as you create a release, and they stay yours if you move on.

Content ID

Registration on every distribution plan: you keep 80% of the Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals, with a 20% fee.

Human release review

Quality, metadata and rights are checked before delivery unless your account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Both companies put your brand on the front, so branding is not the interesting part of this comparison. What a sourced page can cover is their published description, our account structure, and what happens when your business outgrows the published ladder.

Their services page describes a branded dashboard: “Use your logo, color scheme, and custom domain”, and “Invite users into your branded dashboard, where they can manage content, deliver music, and collaborate”, all under your identity. That is a user-invite model, stated in their own words. Their nine distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not state whether separate end-customer workspaces or self-serve signup on your own domain sit behind it, so we make no claim about it either way.

Imprint is our white-label portal: your brand on your own domain, with every end customer in a workspace of its own. A workspace is one label with its own portal login and its own members, and an artist who wants a label of their own can sign up on your domain and become their own end customer. Capability is identical in every workspace, composed by you rather than inherited down a tree. Imprint is quoted at onboarding.

The published plans are the floor of a conversation rather than its ceiling. Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks and the cap is raised in the deal, up to unlimited. Caps, ceilings, platform fees and packaging are negotiable: an operation running thousands of single-label artists can negotiate bulk label pricing, for instance. The route is public and the figures inside any one deal are not, which is the same shape as their quotation.

What our model costs you is worth naming. A workspace for every label suits a reseller whose customers are labels. A customer whose artists do not take labels of their own gets a contributor credit inside somebody else’s workspace for each of them rather than an account, so if you need an account per artist, say so before you sign. The workspaces are also walled off from each other: one end customer never sees another’s data, so a label workspace gets no view of a separate artist workspace and no approvals routing up a tree. Only you, as the operator, see across all of them.

AudioSalad describe a “Powerful API for headless content management, ingestion, and delivery” that lets a developer “retrieve metadata and media assets, remotely trigger ingestions and deliveries, return delivery statuses, and more”. So the question is not whether they have one. It is what you can settle before you buy: their nine distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention published API pricing, a sandbox, rate limits, webhooks or an MCP server, which is an observation about their published material and nothing more. Engine is priced as a product in its own right, four tiers on the pricing page, so you can size the API against a number without asking anyone.

Our meters are published and worth reading before you commit. Each standard tier carries a track limit, a number of end-customer portals, and a monthly royalty-processing cap. The portal count is 5 on Starter, 25 on Growth, 100 on Scale and unlimited on Custom API, and it counts your customers’ portals rather than your own labels. The cap is $35,000, $115,000 and $350,000 a month across the three standard tiers, with no overage fee: sustained excess is a conversation about the next tier. Each standard tier can add one pack of extra portals through support, fixed at 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth and 25 on Scale, and past that one pack the answer is the next tier.

On DDEX, direction matters. We deliver releases and takedowns over the ERN message suite on every distribution plan, and ERN import, either a one-time catalogue import or a continuous feed over SFTP or S3, runs on the API tiers and on Custom Distribution, switched on by support with technical onboarding and a one-time setup fee. The four supported versions are the same in both directions. Documentation is public, and the sandbox opens once a paid API plan is active; the seven-day trial belongs to the self-serve distribution plans and does not reach it.

Published tiers

Starter, Growth, Scale and Custom API are priced on the pricing page, starting prices included.

Portals, not labels

The API limit counts end-customer portals: 5, 25, 100, then unlimited on Custom API.

Cap without overage

Monthly royalty processing caps at $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000, with a tier conversation instead of a fee.

Open-source tooling

Our MCP server is MIT-licensed on the public registry, with a CLI on the same public API.

One card, because one is what the evidence supports on both sides. A short honest list is worth more than a symmetrical one.

Their FAQ states that “AudioSalad is a proud member of the DDEX Consortium”. LabelGrid is not a member. We implement the standard and support ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, but implementing a specification and sitting in the room where it is written are different things. If your rights holders, your board or your compliance team want a delivery partner holding that membership, that is a straightforward reason to choose AudioSalad.

We keep this section in every comparison we publish; a comparison you cannot trust is worth nothing.

Choose AudioSalad if DDEX Consortium membership is something you need from a delivery partner rather than something you would merely like to see. Choose them if you would rather have a deal shaped in a conversation than a ladder you read off a page, and if being walked through the product by their team is how you prefer to evaluate software: their FAQ offers “a fully functioning demo system” on request. Choose them if your ingest is already built around their own XML specification, which their services page names beside spreadsheet bulk ingest and DDEX as one of the routes into their dashboard.

Their published buyer list reads almost exactly like ours, which is why this page is a like-for-like comparison rather than a category argument. Their FAQ names “record labels, artists, music managers, music publishers, content administrators, distributors and more”, and their enquiry form adds Distributor, Music Supervisor/Sync and Music/Media Group to the same list. Both companies sell to the business that releases other people’s music, which is why the deciding factors tend to be the ones in the panel beside this paragraph.

You price it before making contact

Every distribution plan and API tier is published, with the boundaries and overage rates beside it.

You need ERN 4.3 now

We support 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2; their FAQ puts version 4.3 under development.

Accounting in one place

Statements and payouts sit beside the catalogue, not behind a second login, with automated splits from Basic up.

You want the API itself

Engine is a product with its own tiers, public documentation and open-source client tooling.

Ask us these as well. The answers tell you more than any comparison table, including this one.

01Ask which meter your bill sits on, where the boundary is, and what the next unit costs once you cross it. A price with no meter beside it is half a quotation.

02Ask for the price in writing before the first conversation, and check whether every tier is published or only the entry point, because the tier you grow into is the one that decides the budget.

03Ask which DDEX ERN versions the platform sends to your DSPs today, and which versions are described as under development rather than shipping.

04Ask whether DDEX or SFTP catalogue import is available on the plan you are actually buying, what switching it on costs, and whether a continuous feed is supported or only a one-time load.

05Ask whether release review is included, who performs it, and whether it runs on every plan or only where a person is attached to the account.

06Ask where payees are created and statements are read: inside the platform holding your catalogue, or in a second system with its own login and its own account naming rules.

07Ask whether a sandbox exists, at what point in the contract it opens, and whether the client libraries and AI tooling are open source so your engineers can read them.

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, and the API documentation is public; Imprint is quoted at onboarding and the sandbox opens once a paid API plan is active. Each AudioSalad value in the table above comes from one of the pages linked beneath it, read on 23 September 2026. If any of it is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it.