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EmuBands Alternative: Infrastructure for Labels and Platforms

Short answer: EmuBands sells a distribution product to an artist or a small label: pay once per release and it stays live, or pay one annual fee and release as much as you like. 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 with one single, EmuBands is cheaper and simpler than anything we sell. Every EmuBands value in the table below comes from their own published pages, read 23 September 2026.

What does spatial and hi-res audio cost?

EmuBands delivers Dolby Atmos spatial audio to Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDAL at £20 per track, on their Pro and Premium packages, with hi-res audio submission on those same two packages. LabelGrid delivers Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters to the same three platforms on every distribution plan and every API tier, at no extra charge and with no per-track fee.

3

Products on one backend

4

DDEX ERN versions

100%

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

2017

Founded

SOURCED COMPARISON

EmuBands and LabelGrid, line by line

Each EmuBands value below is taken from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read them. The table is short deliberately. Where our own published material says nothing about a dimension, the row is left out rather than answered from one side, because a half-invented row is worse than a missing one.
FeatureLabelGridEmuBands
How you payOne route: a flat yearly plan fee, published for every distribution plan and API tier, and you keep 85% to 95% of the standard-DSP royalties earned through LabelGrid's deals, depending on the planTwo routes: a one-time fee per release, or the Premium annual subscription
What one release costsNo fee per release: releases are covered by the plan's track limit, with a per-track charge above it on Pro ($0.15 a track a year) and on Custom Distribution ($0.25 a track a year)Single: £15.00 / €17.50 / $20.00, one-time
What the customer keepsYou keep 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo and Basic and 90% on Pro; on Custom Distribution and every API tier you keep 95% of standard-DSP royalties earned through LabelGrid's deals and 100% of what you earn on your own DSP deals or through SOBO, which is Custom Distribution and the API tiers onlyTerms state EmuBands retains 0% of DSP receipts; the customer keeps 100%
If you stop payingA yearly subscription keeps the catalogue live: if it lapses or goes unpaid for more than 60 days LabelGrid may remove or withdraw the content and suspend the account, on any plan, and there is no conversion routeA release bought outright stays live with no further fee
YouTube Content IDYouTube Content ID registration is available on every distribution plan, and Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid's own deals is split 80% to the artist with a 20% feeNo commission on YouTube monetisation revenue (Pro and Premium)
Dolby Atmos and hi-res audioDolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters are delivered on every distribution plan and every API tier at no extra charge and with no per-track fee, to Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDALDolby Atmos: £20 per track, Pro and Premium only
Splits with collaboratorsAutomated royalty splits and per-artist statements from the Basic plan up and on every API tier; the Solo plan carries neitherPayment splitting on Pro and Premium
What you can build on itThree products on one backend — self-serve distribution, Imprint (the white-label portal) and Engine (the API) — with public API documentation, an open-source MCP server, DDEX ERN import on the API plans and on Custom Distribution, and label limits of 1 on Solo, 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro and 50 on Custom Distribution, while the API tiers count registered labels at 5, 25, 100 and unlimitedTheir captured material describes an artist-and-label distribution product

Each of the 8 EmuBands values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: www.emubands.com/, www.emubands.com/faqs/how-much-will-it-cost/, www.emubands.com/faqs/why-do-i-need-to-pay-extra-for-youtube-content-id/, www.emubands.com/pricingandplans/, www.emubands.com/services/, www.emubands.com/terms-conditions/. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

HOW ACCOUNTS ARE METERED

Two different ways to count an account

Every platform charges for something it can count, and what it counts tells you who it was built for. EmuBands counts the package and the artist name. Their comparison table prints an artist allowance of 1 for Basic, 1 to 5 for Plus and Unlimited for Pro, while the cards on the same page are headed 1 Artist, 2-5 Artists and 6+ Artists. Premium's cell reads Unlimited with an asterisk, and the footnote resolves it: the subscription includes up to 5 artist names you can use across as many releases as you want, with extra names at £10 / €12 / $13 each. The unlimited that Premium is sold on is unlimited releases; the artist count is a separate meter, and their page states it in more than one way.

LabelGrid counts labels and tracks, and the API tiers run the same label meter higher: 1 label on Solo, 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro and 50 on Custom Distribution, then 5, 25, 100 and an unlimited number of registered labels on Starter API, Growth API, Scale API and Custom API. Every label on the account counts, your own imprints included. The three standard API tiers also cap the royalties they process each month, measured in US dollars: $35,000 on Starter API, $115,000 on Growth API and $350,000 on Scale API.

Neither meter is honest in the abstract, and the question is which one matches your business. Below one artist with one record, a customer pays EmuBands less and keeps more of their royalties.

What each meter counts

Labels per plan

You get 1 label on Solo, 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro and 50 on Custom Distribution.

Labels on API tiers

Starter, Growth, Scale and Custom API count registered labels at 5, 25, 100 and unlimited.

Tracks above the limit

Pro charges $0.15 a track a year above its limit, and Custom Distribution charges $0.25.

Royalties processed

The three standard API tiers cap monthly royalties processed at US$35,000, US$115,000 and US$350,000.

TOOLING ON ONE API

Your catalogue on your own site

LabelGrid publishes a WordPress plugin that syncs releases, artists and download gates into your own site every six hours, and it is available to every account at no additional cost without an API plan. The open-source MCP server on npm, MIT licensed and listed on the public MCP registry, and the companion CLI both need an API plan. All three run on the same public API, so the plugin is not the only route to smart-link landing pages, their lbl.gr short links or pre-save actions, though gated downloads and download contests run only in the plugin.
See the WordPress plugin

FOR LABELS AND ARTISTS

Releasing your own catalogue on LabelGrid

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, and self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial. You keep 85% of your standard-DSP royalties on Solo and Basic and 90% on Pro. On Custom Distribution and every API tier you keep 95% of what you earn through LabelGrid's own standard-DSP deals, and 100% of what you earn on your own direct DSP deals or your own Merlin membership through SOBO, which runs on Custom Distribution and the API tiers only.

Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters are included on every distribution plan at no extra charge. You can register for YouTube Content ID on every distribution plan, and you keep 80% of Content ID and UGC revenue, with a 20% fee on that revenue where LabelGrid's own deals earn it. Automated royalty splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, and Solo carries neither: LabelGrid issues the statement and pays your collaborator. ISRCs and UPCs are assigned automatically at no extra cost and stay yours if you leave.

A person reviews every release on a distribution plan for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals. For one artist putting out one record, EmuBands is still the more direct purchase, and their own figures say so.

In every distribution plan

Spatial and hi-res

Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters are delivered at no extra charge and no per-track fee.

Content ID

You can register on any distribution plan, and you keep 80% of the Content ID and UGC revenue LabelGrid's own deals earn.

Splits and statements

Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, not on Solo.

Release review

A person checks every release on a distribution plan before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

FOR WHITE-LABEL OPERATORS

If you run a platform for other people

Account structure is the part a reseller cannot change later, so it is worth comparing before the price list. Here is the shape their published material describes, the shape ours has, and the route for a business that fits neither.

The shape they publish

Their published material describes a distribution product for an artist or a label releasing its own music: four packages, a per-release fee or an annual subscription, an artist-name allowance, and a feature set that steps up with the package. Their 30 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention a distribution API, a white-label or reseller portal, DDEX or ERN, a sandbox, webhooks or an MCP server. That describes what their pages cover, not what they build.

The shape ours has

Imprint is the LabelGrid white-label portal: your brand on your own domain, with every end customer in a workspace of its own. Each workspace is one label with its own portal login, and an artist who wants their own label can sign themselves up on your domain. Imprint is quoted separately from the published plans. On a self-serve plan, an artist without their own label is a contributor credit rather than an account; on Imprint a label gets an artist layer beneath it, each tier with its own login and its own console.

When neither shape fits

The published ladder is the floor of a conversation rather than its ceiling. A custom deal normally exists because a business has outgrown a listed tier: too many tracks, too many labels, or too much monthly royalty income. Caps and ceilings, platform fees, bespoke packaging such as bulk label pricing for an operation running thousands of single-label artists, and in special cases royalty retention are all negotiable. The route is public and the numbers in any particular deal are not.

Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks by default and the cap is raised in the deal, up to unlimited. Read the published ladder first, then tell us what you are running.

FOR API BUILDERS

Building on the distribution layer

You can read the Engine API documentation and the price of every tier before anyone here knows your name. Starter API, Growth API and Scale API are published, with a starting price for Custom API on the same page. The sandbox is separate: LabelGrid enables it as part of the API upgrade, so it opens once the plan is active rather than before purchase.

LabelGrid supports DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2. Delivery of releases and takedowns to DSPs uses the ERN message suite on every distribution plan. ERN import, whether a one-time catalogue load or a continuous feed over SFTP or S3, runs on the API plans and on Custom Distribution, needs support to switch it on, and carries a one-time setup fee wherever it is enabled. The MCP server is open source on npm under MIT and listed on the public MCP registry, and a companion CLI wraps the same public API.

The meters are a track limit, a portal limit and a monthly cap on royalties processed in US dollars, and crossing one moves you up the published ladder. Each standard API tier can add one pack of extra label portals, fixed at 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth and 25 on Scale; past that pack the answer is the next tier. Every meter is negotiable in a custom deal.

What you can check today

Public documentation

The Engine API docs and the price of every published tier are readable without a login.

Sandbox access

LabelGrid enables the sandbox once the API plan is active, and there is no pre-purchase evaluation.

DDEX support

ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, with import on the API plans and Custom Distribution.

Open-source tooling

The MCP server is MIT licensed on npm and the public registry, with a CLI on the same API.

WHERE THEY WIN

Where EmuBands is the better choice

These three are the reason someone reads a page like this and then buys from them anyway. All three come from their own published documents, and we are not going to argue with any of them.

One release, paid once

A self-releasing artist opens a free Basic account and pays a one-time fee: £15.00 / €17.50 / $20.00 for a single of 1 track, £30.00 / €35.00 / $40.00 for a bundle of 2 to 20 tracks, or £45.00 / €52.50 / $60.00 for a large bundle of 21 tracks or more. Nothing LabelGrid sells is cheaper or simpler for that buyer. Our entry plan is an annual subscription, and for one record a year that is the wrong shape of purchase.

A catalogue that stays live

On their one-time route, their homepage says a release will stay live on DSPs forever with no further costs, and every such release is a Forever Release by default. A customer leaving Premium can convert release by release for 10 GBP / 12 EUR / 13 USD a single or 20 GBP / 24 EUR / 26 USD a bundle. LabelGrid has no equivalent: a subscription lapsed or unpaid for more than 60 days may mean we remove the content and suspend the account, on any plan, with no conversion route.

Nothing taken from royalties

Their Terms state that EmuBands shall account for and pay the client 100% of EmuBands' receipts from the DSPs and shall retain 0% of those receipts, on every package including the free one. A LabelGrid customer keeps 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro, 95% on Custom Distribution and the API tiers where the standard-DSP deals are ours, and 100% only on their own direct DSP deals or their own Merlin membership through SOBO. On retention they match or beat us nearly everywhere.

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

HOW TO DECIDE

Which one to buy

Choose EmuBands if you are one artist, or a handful of artists, putting records out under your own names and you want the purchase to end when the release goes live. Choose them if a catalogue that stays up without a subscription matters more to you than anything on our feature list, because that is a real structural difference and LabelGrid has no equivalent.

Choose them if YouTube monetisation is a genuine line of your income and you are willing to hold a Pro or Premium subscription to get their published 0% rate on it. Choose them if requesting a payout at any balance matters, since their FAQ publishes no minimum threshold, or if you want the option of a full refund of the fee when you cancel before the Point of Distribution, which their Terms give and ours do not.

None of that is a short list. An independently owned, owner-operated Scottish company formed in 2005, publishing its whole price matrix in three currencies, is a deliberate choice rather than a default one.

Choose LabelGrid if

You run a roster

You need several labels, per-artist statements, and splits LabelGrid calculates and pays out for you.

You resell distribution

Imprint puts every end customer in its own branded workspace on your domain, quoted separately.

You build software

Engine has published tiers, public documentation, four ERN versions and an open-source MCP server.

You deliver spatial audio

Atmos and hi-res masters ship on every distribution plan and API tier at no extra charge.

BEFORE YOU SIGN

Seven questions worth asking anyone

Ask these of us as well as of them. A platform that will not answer them in writing is asking you to find out after you have paid.

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

02Ask whether you can read the price of the tier you will end up on without booking a call, and whether the tier above it is published too, because the second answer tells you what growth costs.

03Ask whether a person checks a release for audio, metadata and rights before it is delivered, whether that check costs extra, and which plans it applies to.

04Ask what happens to a catalogue that is already live if you stop paying, how long you have before anything is removed, and whether any route exists to keep those releases up.

05Ask which DDEX ERN versions the platform supports, in which direction, and whether catalogue import over SFTP or S3 is included in the plan or priced as a separate piece of work.

06Ask whether there is a sandbox, what it costs and at which point it opens, because before you buy and once the plan is active are two different answers to the same question.

07Ask whether the AI and automation tooling is open source and installable today, under which licence, and whether it runs on the same public API the platform documents for everyone else.

Questions people actually ask

Who is behind EmuBands, and who runs LabelGrid?
EmuBands is a trading name of EmuBands Ltd, which their Terms describe as a company registered in Scotland with a registered office in Glasgow, and their About page says EmuBands are digital music distributors based in Glasgow, a UNESCO City of Music. That page's heading says EmuBands formed in 2005, and their switching guides say the company has remained fully independent and owner-operated since then. LabelGrid is LABEL GRID, LLC, formed in 2017, independently owned with no major-label and no DSP parent, working from Denver, Colorado. They are the older company and they say so on their own homepage.

How much does EmuBands cost?
Their pricing FAQ offers two routes, which it describes as a one-time fee per release and EmuBands Premium, unlimited distribution for one price. On the one-time route a single of 1 track costs £15.00 / €17.50 / $20.00, a bundle of 2 to 20 tracks costs £30.00 / €35.00 / $40.00, and a large bundle of 21 tracks or more costs £45.00 / €52.50 / $60.00. Their Plus and Pro packages at £30 / €35 / $40 and £60 / €70 / $80 a year buy the feature set and still pay the per-release fee on top; only Premium removes that fee. Neither route takes a percentage of royalties. A LabelGrid plan does: alongside a flat yearly fee, published for every distribution plan and API tier, you keep 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro and 95% through LabelGrid's own deals on Custom Distribution and the API tiers.

What happens to my EmuBands releases if I stop paying?
Their Premium tier is one annual fee of 90 GBP / 105 EUR / 120 USD for unlimited releases with no per-release charges, their own FAQ says that if you leave the Premium plan your releases will be removed from stores, and LabelGrid is blunter still, because a subscription lapsed or unpaid for more than 60 days may mean we remove or withdraw the content and suspend the account on any plan. They also publish a way out that keeps the catalogue up and we have no equivalent: converting a release to a Forever Release costs 10 GBP / 12 EUR / 13 USD for a single and 20 GBP / 24 EUR / 26 USD for a bundle, one time, per release. Releases bought on their pay-per-release model stay live without any conversion.

Does EmuBands take a cut of your royalties?
No, and it is their contract rather than their marketing that says so. Their Terms state that EmuBands shall account for and pay to the client 100% of EmuBands' receipts from usage and exploitation via the DSPs, and that EmuBands shall retain 0% of those receipts, on every package including the free Basic account. A LabelGrid customer keeps 85% of their standard-DSP royalties on Solo and Basic and 90% on Pro. On Custom Distribution and every API tier a customer keeps 95% of what they earn through LabelGrid's own standard-DSP deals, and 100% of what they earn on their own direct DSP deals or their own Merlin membership through SOBO, which is available on Custom Distribution and the API tiers only. On retention they match or beat us on every plan except where you bring your own DSP deals, and pretending otherwise would take one click to disprove.

Which one is better for YouTube Content ID?
Their Content ID FAQ says they take no commission from money you earn as a result of YouTube monetisation and return 100% of it to you, and it lets a customer set different policies across each recording. That rate sits behind a subscription: their pages say Content ID is included with EmuBands Pro and Premium subscriptions, and that if you downgrade from Pro or Premium they will cease managing your releases on YouTube Content ID even where those releases have been converted to Forever Releases. LabelGrid makes Content ID registration available on every distribution plan, and you keep 80% of the Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals, with a 20% fee on that revenue. A better rate behind a subscription against availability on every plan at a fee: price both against what you actually earn on YouTube.

How do payouts work at EmuBands, and how do they work at LabelGrid?
Their FAQ says there is no minimum payout threshold at EmuBands, so a customer can request a payout at any time regardless of how much they have earned, and that is a commitment LabelGrid does not make: LabelGrid's minimum payout is USD 20, with a smaller balance carried forward. Before requesting a payout their customers need an active Self-Billing Agreement, set up in the account and renewed annually. Their Terms commit to paying all monies claimed within 10 working days of the request, subject to funds having been received from the DSPs, and their payments are normally made via Wise or PayPal subject to those providers' own deductions; a bank transfer to a UK bank account carries a £1 administration charge, and their Terms state that no such charge applies to payments made via PayPal or Wise. LabelGrid charges no payout fee of its own on any plan. The bank transfer fee for each payout is deducted at cost. LabelGrid pays monthly: the statement is generated from the 21st, payment is initiated between the 3rd and the 14th of the following month, and funds arrive 3 to 7 business days after that.

Can you get a refund if you cancel?
Their Terms state that the client can cancel at any time and that on a request for Early Cancellation EmuBands will refund the Contract Price in full, with no refund offered after the Point of Distribution. That is better than our answer before distribution and the same as it afterwards. On LabelGrid standard plans a customer may terminate at any time in writing, and fees already paid for the term are not refunded.

Is either distribution licence exclusive?
Neither is. Their Terms have the client grant EmuBands a non-exclusive licence to give DSPs permission to distribute the recordings, and their rights FAQ answers the question the same way. 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. On their side, for non-subscription services their Terms say they will automatically continue to supply services on an ongoing basis unless the client instructs otherwise, and a takedown request for one release does not end the agreement for the rest.

What do the EmuBands packages actually include?
Their comparison table ticks charts registration, compilation and various-artist releases, a custom label name, custom price tiers, pre-save set-up and smart links, and pre-orders for Plus, Pro and Premium, and ticks hi-res audio submission, Apple Digital Masters, profile verification, Content ID features, video call support, playlist pitching, royalty payment splitting and a personal account manager for Pro and Premium only. Dolby Atmos submission is Pro and Premium as well, at £20 per track to Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDAL, uploaded through the account manager. Premium includes up to 5 artist names usable across as many releases as the customer wants, with extra names at £10 / €12 / $13 each. Two of those rows have a LabelGrid counterpart worth naming: Atmos and high-resolution masters are on every LabelGrid distribution plan and every API tier at no extra charge, and automated splits with per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, not on Solo.

How do you move a catalogue from one distributor to another?
Their switching guide puts it plainly: there is no switch in the back end of streaming services to transfer catalogues, so the process is adding identical versions of the releases to the new distributor and then asking the old one to take their versions down. That is true of LabelGrid too. Keeping the same ISRC, track title, version information, artist name and audio file gives play counts the best chance of linking, and their guide suggests adding the new release about a week before the old distributor takes theirs down. LabelGrid lets a customer enter ISRCs and UPCs they already hold during release creation, which is how that continuity is kept.

See what it costs before you talk to us

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 Engine documentation is readable without a login. If you are one artist putting out one record, EmuBands is the simpler purchase and this page has said so more than once. If you are running a roster, a catalogue or a platform for other people, read the price list and then tell us what you are running. Every EmuBands value in the table above comes 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.

See API Pricing