Ditto Music Alternative: What the Contract Says

Short answer: on recorded music, Ditto Music’s published deal is the more generous one. They publish no commission on it; LabelGrid’s Solo, Basic and Pro retain 85%, 85% and 90%, and Custom Distribution and the API tiers retain 95% on our standard-DSP deals and 100% on yours. Our claim is narrower: our rate is written down per plan and in our Terms, while their distribution Terms state no percentage and no definition of net revenue. Every Ditto Music value in the table comes from their own pages, linked beneath it.

Getting your money out costs something on both sides. Ditto requires an active subscription to withdraw royalties at all, and prices every withdrawal above a £25 balance by method: £0.75 local bank in the UK, USA and most of Europe, £3 Global ACH or Payoneer, £9 wire. LabelGrid charges no fee of its own to issue a payout, though we too may set a discretionary, dashboard-shown payout threshold, and content may be withdrawn after 60 days lapsed on any plan.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

LabelGrid fee to issue a payout

Founded

Each Ditto Music value below is taken from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read them: the pricing page, the homepage, the Terms and the help centre. A dimension their pages do not state is left out rather than guessed at.

Each of the 14 Ditto Music values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-18: dittomusic.com/en/labels, dittomusic.com/en/pricing, dittomusic.com/en/terms, support.dittomusic.com/en/articles/10616228-how-can-i-contact-ditto-music, support.dittomusic.com/en/articles/4283500-can-i-release-music-for-multiple-artists-from-one-account, support.dittomusic.com/en/articles/4284017-how-does-youtube-content-id-work, support.dittomusic.com/en/articles/4424698-how-do-i-withdraw-royalties, support.dittomusic.com/en/articles/6701028-how-do-i-add-split-royalty-payments-to-a-release, support.dittomusic.com/en/articles/6701129-can-i-withdraw-royalties-without-an-active-subscription, support.dittomusic.com/en/articles/6701279-will-ditto-music-publishing-take-a-cut-of-my-music-publishing-royalties. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

Both companies put a number in front of you before you sign. The question worth asking is where that number lives, and whether you can check it without a sales call.

What we will defend is that our number exists. Our Terms state accounting fees between 0 and 20% of net payable revenue paid to us by the DSPs, with each plan’s rate on the pricing page. Ditto’s distribution Terms carry no percentage and no definition of net revenue; what they carry is a condition on payment, that Ditto pays “only monies earned within the preceding months … and only if received from retailer/licensee”, with any transaction charges passed on.

Several things sit outside the subscription and are priced separately on their own pages: a withdrawal priced by method, publishing administration at 10% and sync at 20%, promotion sold as packages, and an active subscription required to withdraw royalties at all. Our own payout threshold is discretionary and shown in your dashboard, so their £25 floor is not a point in our favour. Issuing the payout costs nothing with us.

The price list

Every distribution plan and API tier is published, Custom and API starting prices included; Imprint is quoted separately.

The rate you pay

Our Terms state accounting fees of 0-20% of net payable revenue, with the per-plan rate on the pricing page.

The cost of a payout

No LabelGrid charge on any plan to issue one, though a threshold may apply and your own bank’s charges still do.

This page

Each Ditto Music value in the table comes from one of the pages listed beneath it, with the date we read them.

The LabelGrid WordPress plugin syncs your releases to your own website, and the open-source MCP server and command-line tool on npm run on the same public API. Publish your catalogue, script it from a terminal, or query it from your own AI client.

Ditto’s plans are published and easy to price: Starter at €19 a year for one artist, Pro at €59 for two, Labels from €89 for five and up. LabelGrid’s Solo, Basic and Pro are published annual fees that retain 85%, 85% and 90% of standard-DSP royalties, and each of those self-serve plans opens with a seven-day free trial. Every release on a distribution plan is checked by a person for quality, metadata and rights, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals, and automated royalty splits run from Basic up and on every API tier, not on Solo or GATE.

Then there is what happens when the payments stop. Ditto’s help centre states that you need an active subscription to withdraw royalties and release new music, and that Release Protection shields releases from takedown on the Pro and Label plans. Ours is the blunter instrument here: if a LabelGrid subscription lapses for more than 60 days without renewal, we may withdraw your content and suspend the account, on any plan.

Release review

Quality, metadata and rights are checked by a person on every distribution plan before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Splits

Automated royalty splits run from Basic up and on every API tier, and are not on Solo or GATE.

Content ID

YouTube Content ID on every distribution plan; UGC and Content ID revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals carries a 20% fee.

Trial

Self-serve plans open with a seven-day free trial, so a release can go through the builder before you commit.

Payouts

No LabelGrid fee to issue one; a threshold may apply, and your own bank’s charges still do.

Ditto’s Labels plans hold a roster inside one account, in bands of five to forty artists by plan. The LabelGrid shape is flat: every customer, artist or label, is its own complete workspace, and Imprint, the LabelGrid white-label portal, puts those workspaces under your brand.

A Ditto Labels plan starts at €89 a year for up to five artists and runs in bands to forty, with per-artist profiles, roster analytics and automatic splits in one dashboard. Their Terms attach a fair-usage policy to the Unlimited Distribution package, enforceable at their discretion, and state that the package “is intended for individual artists rather than labels”. If one login across a fixed roster is what you want, that is the simpler shape, priced on their page.

Each LabelGrid end customer is one label with its own portal login, catalogue, analytics and earnings, partitioned from every other, while you as the reseller see across all of them. The cost of that shape is plain: a label customer does not get a tier of artists beneath it to supervise, because an artist who wants a label of their own signs up as their own end customer on your domain. Imprint puts that portal under your brand and is quoted separately.

The published ladder sizes plans by a track limit and a label limit. Custom Distribution is a yearly fee plus $0.25 per track per year up to 10,000 tracks, and the standard API tiers add label portals in packs of five, ten or twenty-five. If your business does not fit those ceilings, thousands of artists each running a single label being the obvious example, we price it as a custom deal. Caps, platform fees, bulk label pricing and packaging are negotiable, and the numbers are agreed under NDA.

Whichever shape suits you, the ladder on the pricing page is the floor of that conversation rather than its ceiling. Ditto Label Services is a conversation too: they describe it as working with a hand-picked roster, and ours starts from a number you can already read.

The LabelGrid API documentation is public, with no login and no application form in front of it. The three standard Engine tiers are published as flat yearly fees, and Custom API starts from a published figure and adds $0.025 per track per month. Delivery is DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2. A sandbox comes with every API plan once that plan is active, after onboarding screening and KYC/KYB. The MCP server, @labelgrid/mcp, is open source under MIT on the public MCP registry, with the @labelgrid/cli command-line tool beside it.

None of the Ditto pages we captured state an API, a DDEX version or a sandbox, so we make no claim about what they give a developer; ask them. Our own meters are worth owning here. Each standard tier carries a track limit, a label limit and a cap of $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000 of royalties processed a month. Crossing a track or label limit moves you up the published ladder, and sustained excess on the royalty cap starts a tier conversation rather than an overage charge.

Tracks and labels

Each standard tier carries a track limit and a label limit; portals are added in packs of five, ten or twenty-five.

Royalties

Each standard tier caps royalties processed a month at $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000; sustained excess moves you up a tier.

Sandbox

Issued with every API plan once the plan is active, after onboarding screening and KYC/KYB.

Tooling

The MCP server and CLI are open source under MIT, readable before either one touches your catalogue.

Here is where Ditto Music is the stronger answer, from their own pages.

Ditto Music Publishing administers compositions under an exclusive appointment and is included with Pro and Label subscriptions, at 10% of publishing royalties and 20% on sync placements they negotiate. Their publishing Terms define the Net Revenue your 90% is a share of. LabelGrid does not administer publishing. If you want master and composition income collected through one account, that is a real reason to choose them.

Ditto’s homepage says they back talent they believe in with advances, release strategy and marketing support. That sits with Ditto Label Services, which works with a hand-picked roster, and no rate, term or recoupment basis is published. LabelGrid does not fund advances. If capital against future earnings is part of what you want from a distributor, we are the wrong shop and they are a serious one.

Ditto sells promotion as packaged campaigns with a price and a duration attached: Promo at €459 one-time over four weeks, Promo Plus at €629 over six. Alongside those they market sync licensing, mastering, music videos and a merch store. LabelGrid does not sell promotion campaigns; the plan ships marketing tools such as smart links and pre-saves, not a campaign service. If you want the company that delivers the record to pitch it as well, buy that from them.

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

Choose Ditto Music if you are one artist or a small roster: theirs is the lower published entry price of the two, and no commission on recorded-music royalties is published on any of their plans, so more of what a modest catalogue earns stays with you. Choose them if you want publishing administration in the same account as distribution, promotion sold as a package with a price and a duration on it, or an advance against future earnings.

Choose them too if a fixed roster under one login fits how you work. A Labels plan holds five to forty artists in a single dashboard, which is less administration than a workspace each, and for a stable roster that is the cheaper way to run it.

Choose LabelGrid if the situations on the right describe you. What they share is a business that has outgrown a personal subscription, or one that needs the platform running underneath somebody else’s brand.

You have outgrown a subscription

Custom Distribution and every API tier retain 95% of royalties on our standard-DSP deals and 100% on your own.

You want the rate in writing

Our Terms state accounting fees of 0-20% of net payable revenue, with the per-plan rate published on the pricing page.

You build on an API

Public docs, three published tiers, DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, and a sandbox with the plan.

You run a white label

Every customer is its own workspace, Imprint puts the portal on your domain, and a custom deal covers what a ladder does not.

Put these to whoever you are evaluating, us included.

01What moves my bill as I grow: a track count, a label count, my monthly royalty income, or the number of artists? Ask for the whole ladder.

02Can I read the price for a business my size without a sales call, and at which plan does the published price stop?

03What percentage does the contract say you keep, and what is it a percentage of? Ask what the rate becomes if I stop subscribing and leave the catalogue live.

04What does it cost me to move my balance into my bank? Ask for the minimum, the charge per payout by method, and who carries the transaction fee.

05Is release review included in the plan, does every release go through it before delivery, and how long does it take?

06Which DDEX ERN versions do you deliver, and to which DSPs? If the answer is not on a page, ask why it is not.

07Is there a sandbox, when do I get access to it, and is the automation tooling I would connect to my catalogue open source so I can read it first?

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, our Terms state the accounting fee range, and the API documentation is public; Imprint is quoted separately. Each Ditto Music value in the table above comes from one of the pages linked beneath it, with the date we read them. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.