CD Baby Alternative: Infrastructure for Labels and Platforms

Short answer: CD Baby sells a consumer product to an artist releasing their own record. One fee per release, no subscription, and on their own published figures the customer keeps 91% of the resulting digital distribution revenue. LabelGrid sells the infrastructure a label, a roster or a platform runs on: self-serve distribution, Imprint the white-label portal, and Engine the API. For one artist putting out one single, CD Baby is cheaper and simpler than anything we sell. Every CD Baby value in the table below is sourced from their own published pages, read 23 September 2026.

CD Baby’s Digital Distribution Addendum states that “While selling Your Content on the Website is nonexclusive (meaning you have the right to sell your music and videos directly), the rights granted by you to us under this Digital Distribution Addendum are exclusive with respect to serving as your authorized representative for distributing Your Content to third party distributors for online redistribution, because online retailers (e.g., iTunes, Amazon, etc.) will refuse content that may be delivered by multiple parties.” The licence LabelGrid takes is global and non-exclusive: you may distribute the same content elsewhere at the same time, and no exclusivity survives termination.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

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

Founded

Each CD Baby value below is sourced from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read them. The table is short on purpose. Where our own published material says nothing about a dimension, the row is left out rather than filled in from one side, because a half-invented row is worse than a missing one.

Each of the 7 CD Baby values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: cdbaby.com/artist-agreement/, cdbaby.com/cd-baby-cost/, cdbaby.com/digital-distribution-addendum/, cdbaby.com/music-distribution/, cdbaby.com/music-distribution/get-on-youtube/. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

CD Baby’s published figure is one rate at every volume. Their pricing page states “We keep just 9% of your digital distribution revenue and you get the remaining 91%.”, and their Digital Distribution Addendum defines the base as “ninety-one percent (91%) of the net wholesale price actually received by us from our Licensees”, net of Tax. There is no ladder in it, which is part of why it is easy to understand.

On LabelGrid the share is a plan term and it moves with the plan. A customer keeps 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro. On Custom Distribution and on every API tier a customer keeps 95% of standard-DSP royalties earned through LabelGrid’s own deals, and 100% of what they earn on their own direct DSP deals or through SOBO, which is available on those tiers only. What pays for the platform is a flat yearly fee, published for each plan on the pricing page, and it steps up with catalogue size instead of climbing with the royalties.

Solo and Basic

You keep 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo and 85% on Basic, a rate published on our pricing page rather than quoted from a contract.

Pro

You keep 90% of standard-DSP royalties, and Pro adds $0.15 per track a year above its track limit.

Custom Distribution and API tiers

You keep 95% of royalties earned through our standard-DSP deals on Custom Distribution and on every API tier, and 100% of what you earn on your own deals or through SOBO, which those tiers alone carry.

Issuing a payout

LabelGrid charges nothing of its own to pay you; your bank’s transfer and conversion charges still apply.

The LabelGrid WordPress plugin pulls releases, artists and download gates into your own site every six hours and builds smart-link landing pages, Spotify pre-saves and gated downloads. It runs on every LabelGrid account at no extra cost, and it needs no API plan. The same catalogue is reachable two other ways, and both of those do need one: @labelgrid/mcp, our MIT-licensed MCP server on the public registry, and the @labelgrid/cli companion, each running on the public API with an API plan and a token behind it.

LabelGrid distribution plans are billed yearly and sized by two meters: how many tracks the catalogue holds and how many labels sit in the account. Solo carries one label, Basic three, Pro five and Custom Distribution fifty, and each label keeps its own logo, default genres, P-line and C-line, outlet settings and statement lines. Pro charges $0.15 per track a year above its track limit and Custom Distribution $0.25, so growth shows up as a published per-unit charge rather than as a larger slice of the royalties.

Inside any of them: Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters delivered at no extra charge, YouTube Content ID registration on every distribution plan with social and user-generated monetization running through that same registration, ISRCs and UPCs at no cost and yours to keep, which their pricing page also lists as “Free UPC barcode & ISRCs”, and a person who checks quality, metadata and rights before the release goes out unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals. Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier; Solo has neither, which matters the moment there is a second person to pay. Self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial, so the first release can be built before anything is charged.

Release review

A person checks quality, metadata and rights before delivery on every distribution plan, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Atmos and Hi-Res

Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters are delivered on every distribution plan at no extra charge.

Splits and statements

Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier; Solo carries neither.

Labels per plan

1 label on Solo, 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro and 50 on Custom Distribution, each with its own settings and statement lines.

Running a roster or a platform is a different job from releasing a record, and the account shape is where the difference shows first.

CD Baby’s published material describes a distribution product for an artist releasing their own record: a per-release fee, a published share, YouTube and social monetization, and publishing administration sold as an add-on. Their 20 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention a distribution API, a sandbox, webhooks, a white-label or reseller portal sold by CD Baby, DDEX ERN ingest or an MCP server. That is a description of what they publish, not a claim about what they build.

Imprint is the LabelGrid white-label portal: your brand, your domain, and every end customer in a workspace of its own with its own login, catalogue, catalogue tools and statements. Workspaces sit flat beside each other rather than hanging off a tree, so one customer’s settings never reach another’s. Imprint is scoped and quoted at onboarding rather than listed on the price page.

Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks and the cap is raised inside the deal. Past that, a custom agreement is the normal route for anyone whose business does not fit a listed tier: too many tracks, too many labels, or too much monthly royalty income. Caps, platform fees and packaging are all negotiable, and in special cases so is royalty retention.

The ladder on the pricing page is the floor of that conversation rather than its ceiling. An operation running thousands of artists who each want their own label gets bulk label pricing; the figures in a signed custom deal stay between us and that customer.

Infrastructure gets chosen for years rather than for a month, so the useful question is how much of it you can read before you commit. LabelGrid API documentation is public and needs no login and no sales call. Three standard tiers are priced on the API page along with a starting price for Custom API, and the sandbox is enabled once the plan is active, after onboarding screening and KYC/KYB, rather than before purchase.

Catalogue moves in and out over DDEX, and the two directions are scoped differently. LabelGrid delivers releases and takedowns to DSPs using the ERN message suite on every distribution plan. ERN import, whether a one-time catalogue load or a continuous SFTP or S3 feed, runs on the API tiers and on Custom Distribution, needs support to switch on, and carries a one-time setup fee wherever it is enabled. The same four versions, ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, are supported going out and coming in.

The meters are worth knowing before you sign rather than after. A tier carries a track limit, a portal count and a monthly royalty-processing cap, and crossing one moves you up the published ladder instead of producing a surprise line on the invoice. @labelgrid/mcp is MIT-licensed with 30 tools across eight toolsets, so the agent tooling you point at your catalogue is readable too.

End-customer portals

The API tiers count portals, not your own labels: 5 on Starter, 25 on Growth, 100 on Scale and unlimited on Custom API.

One label pack

Each standard tier can add one pack of extra label portals through support, fixed at 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth and 25 on Scale.

Royalty processing

Standard tiers cap royalties processed monthly at $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000, with no overage fee.

Sandbox and DDEX

The sandbox opens once the plan is active. ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 go out on every distribution plan and come in on the API tiers and Custom Distribution.

Three places where CD Baby is the better answer, taken from their own published pages. One of them is the headline this page might have been built on, until we checked it against our own pricing.

Their pricing page reads “RELEASE A SINGLE FOR $9.99 OR AN ALBUM FOR $14.99. NO SUBSCRIPTION FEES.”, and the same page states “We keep just 9% of your digital distribution revenue and you get the remaining 91%.” So one release costs one payment, and the customer keeps 91% of what it earns. For an artist putting out a single this year, that is cheaper and simpler than anything LabelGrid sells, and we are not going to dress it up as something else.

Their distribution page states “CD Baby has no recurring subscription fees, so you don’t have to worry about us taking down your music if you miss a payment (there are no payments!)”, and their account-closure article adds “There are no annual fees, and there’s no cost to leave an account open but inactive, even if your releases have been canceled.” LabelGrid is a yearly subscription, and one lapsed or unpaid for more than 60 days may lead to the content being removed, on any plan.

91% to the customer beats what a customer keeps on three of our four distribution plans: 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro. Only Custom Distribution and the API tiers go past it, at 95% on royalties earned through LabelGrid’s standard-DSP deals and 100% on the customer’s own deals. If the share is the whole of your question, their published number is the better one until you reach those tiers.

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

Choose CD Baby if you are releasing your own music and you want the whole commercial deal to fit on one line. Their pricing page gives it as “RELEASE A SINGLE FOR $9.99 OR AN ALBUM FOR $14.99. NO SUBSCRIPTION FEES.” with the customer keeping 91% of the digital distribution revenue that follows. Choose them if you put out a record every year or two and would rather not carry a yearly plan between releases. Choose them if you want a live catalogue to sit there with nothing further to pay, which their distribution page states in terms.

Choose them, too, if you want publishing administration alongside distribution. Their Publishing Administration Addendum covers that side, and LabelGrid does not offer publishing administration or publishing royalty collection today.

Choose LabelGrid when the thing you are managing stops being a release and starts being a catalogue, a roster, or somebody else’s catalogue running under your name.

You run several labels

1 label on Solo, 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro and 50 on Custom Distribution, each with its own settings and statement lines.

You pay other people

Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, with royalty accounting on the platform.

You build on an API

Public docs, three published tiers plus Custom API, four supported DDEX ERN versions, and a sandbox once the plan is active.

You distribute for others

Imprint puts every end customer in a workspace of its own, on your domain and under your brand rather than ours.

Put them to us as readily as to anyone else.

01Ask what the plan is metered by, whether that is releases, labels, tracks or royalties processed, and what happens at the moment you cross a meter rather than what the headline figure is before you do.

02Ask what the percentage is a percentage of, which deductions come off before your share is worked out, and whether that definition sits in the contract or only on a marketing page.

03Ask where the published number stops and a quotation starts, on every tier you might realistically grow into, and get the answer before you upload a catalogue rather than after.

04Ask whether the distribution licence you grant is exclusive or non-exclusive, in which territories, and whether any part of it stays in force after you leave.

05Ask whether a person checks quality, metadata and rights before a release is delivered rather than after a complaint, on which plans that happens, and whether it costs extra.

06Ask what happens to releases already live if you stop paying, what it costs to leave them there, and what moving the whole catalogue to someone else would actually involve.

07Ask which DDEX ERN versions they support and in which direction, when a sandbox becomes available relative to paying, and whether the tooling you would point at your catalogue is open source.

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial, and the API documentation is readable without a login. If you are one artist putting out one record, CD Baby is the simpler purchase and this page has said so plainly more than once. If you are running a catalogue, a roster or a platform, start with the price list and then talk to us. Every CD Baby value in the table above is sourced from their own published pages, read 23 September 2026; if anything here has gone out of date or reads unfairly, tell us and we will correct it.