iGroove Alternative: Infrastructure, Not a Service Deal

Short answer: iGroove is a Swiss service business selling distribution with advances and marketing campaigns, at a one-time fee per release plus a permanent share of revenue and no recurring fee. LabelGrid sells the infrastructure a label or a platform runs on, priced as a flat yearly fee. An iGroove account starts with an application they may decline; a LabelGrid self-serve plan starts on a 7-day free trial, and an API plan needs onboarding screening here too. Every iGroove value in the table below comes from their own published pages.

iGroove answer that in their own FAQ: “You maintain control over your rights. iGroove only obtains the right for the digital distribution of the songs you upload, and exclusively for the platforms, stores, and countries you specify. If our business relationship with you ends, we retain the distribution rights for an additional 12 months. After this period, these rights revert to you.” That exclusive period attaches to recordings published through iGroove in the contract territory, their contract runs for an indefinite period with 30 days’ notice to the end of the month on either side, the 12 months then runs from the end of the contract term, recordings confirmed for distribution before their terms took effect on 4 May 2024 are carved out, and their Terms add that a takedown inside that period is “only permissible with prior consent from COMPANY” apart from legal situations such as copyright infringement or proven loss of rights. The licence LabelGrid takes is global and non-exclusive, so you can distribute the same content elsewhere at the same time, no exclusivity survives termination, and you withdraw a release yourself by deselecting outlets on its Outlets tab.

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

Every iGroove value below is quoted or paraphrased from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read it. Where their pages do not settle a dimension, or state it two ways, the row is left out rather than guessed at.

Each of the 8 iGroove values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: www.igroovemusic.com/faq/1-5-are-there-any-recurring-costs-with-igroove, www.igroovemusic.com/igroove-plus, www.igroovemusic.com/terms-and-conditions. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

Their Terms say that “COMPANY may enable PARTNER to create subaccounts … for additional users within the Account”, and that the account holder is liable for what those users do. That is a capability for extra people inside one account, granted at iGroove’s discretion, which is a different object from a label or an end-customer workspace. It is a fine thing to have, and it is not a number you can plan a roster around.

A LabelGrid account is metered in labels: 1 on Solo, 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro and 50 on Custom Distribution. Each label carries its own profile and defaults, its own distribution settings, and its own lines on the royalty statement, so an artist’s numbers come out of the export already separated. The API tiers count something else entirely, end-customer portals, at 5 on Starter API, 25 on Growth API, 100 on Scale API and unlimited on Custom API, and each portal is a full workspace on Imprint, our white-label portal. Two meters, two different questions.

On the money path beside it, one difference is small and precise. Their price list charges “all RevShare-Partners using the ‘My Deals’ feature … a fee of 8 (eight) USD/EUR/GBP/CHF for each requested payout”, and their FAQ scopes it to artists who are not already iGroove customers rather than to the account holder. LabelGrid charges no payout, processing, withdrawal or per-transfer fee on any plan, with automated splits and per-artist statements from Basic up and on every API tier, and neither on Solo. Bank-side transfer and currency-conversion charges fall on the customer on both sides, and that half is identical.

Labels per plan

Solo 1, Basic 3, Pro 5, Custom Distribution 50, each separately configured.

End-customer portals

The API tiers meter portals instead: 5 on Starter API, 25 on Growth API, 100 on Scale API, unlimited on Custom API.

Splits and statements

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

Payout fees

LabelGrid charges no payout, processing, withdrawal or per-transfer fee on any plan.

LabelGrid Tools, our WordPress plugin, is in the WordPress directory, costs nothing extra on any account and needs no API plan: it syncs releases, artists and download gates into your site every six hours and builds smart-link landing pages, Spotify pre-saves and gated downloads. The landing pages, their lbl.gr short URLs and the pre-save actions are on the public API too if you are on an API plan, while gated downloads and download contests stay plugin-only. Alongside the API sit an open-source MCP server on npm under MIT and a companion CLI, so the tooling you script against and the tooling we ship are the same thing.

Start with the money, because it is where the two models separate. A LabelGrid customer keeps 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro; on Custom Distribution and 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 their own Merlin membership through SOBO, which is available on Custom Distribution and the API tiers only. Content ID and UGC revenue carries a 20% fee on revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals, and every one of those prices is on the pricing page.

iGroove price the same job differently and, at the low end, more cheaply. Their price list charges a one-time setup fee per release of CHF 25 / EUR 19 / USD 20 / GBP 15 for a single, CHF 35 / EUR 29 / USD 30 / GBP 25 for an EP and CHF 55 / EUR 49 / USD 50 / GBP 40 for an album, and an iGroove customer on their standard deal keeps 92% of revenue with no subscription to carry. Two things decide which model costs less. The first is how many releases you put out, because their fee is charged per release and ours is not. The second is the percentage: their 8% sits below the 15% on Solo and Basic and the 10% on Pro, and above the 5% on Custom Distribution and the API tiers, so rising revenue favours our model only from Custom Distribution up. A few releases earning modestly sit on the side where their model is cheaper, and where the crossover falls depends on your release count and revenue rather than on our argument.

What the flat fee buys is the same on every distribution plan: Dolby Atmos mixes and hi-res masters delivered at no extra charge, YouTube Content ID registration, ISRC and UPC codes at no cost that stay yours if you move, and a manual review of every release for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals. Self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial.

Spatial and hi-res

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

Content ID

Registration is available on all distribution plans, and Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals carries a 20% fee.

Release review

Every release on a distribution plan is reviewed for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Codes you keep

ISRC and UPC codes cost nothing extra and remain yours if you later change distributor.

Running other people’s releases is a different purchase from running your own, and the honest way to compare it is as a trade-off between account shapes rather than as a feature score.

iGroove’s published material describes an application-gated account, a mobile app that runs the whole business from a phone, a distribution service, marketing services and advances. Their 28 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention a white-label or reseller portal, an API, a sandbox, webhooks, DDEX ERN ingest or an MCP server. That is a statement about what their published documentation covers, not about what they can build, and the right people to ask about a roadmap are iGroove.

Imprint is the LabelGrid white-label portal: your brand on your domain, with every end customer in its own workspace and its own portal login, composed by you rather than inherited down a tree. Access is by waiting list and pricing is scoped at onboarding rather than published. Our model has a cost worth naming: a workspace is one label, so an artist who wants their own becomes their own end customer through self-serve signup on your domain, and an artist who does not is a contributor credit inside someone else’s workspace.

The published ladder is the floor of a conversation rather than its ceiling. A custom deal is normally for a business whose shape runs past the listed tiers: too many tracks, too many labels, or too much monthly royalty income. Caps and ceilings, platform fees and bespoke packaging are all negotiable, and bulk label pricing for an operation running thousands of single-label artists is a real example of the last one. The route is public; the numbers in any signed deal are not.

If your business is releasing and accounting for music that other people own, the questions worth asking are how many workspaces you get, who logs into them, and whether the statement export separates them for you. Those are answerable from our pricing page and our royalty accounting documentation before you speak to anybody.

The LabelGrid API documentation is public and readable without a sales call, and the three standard tiers plus Custom API are priced on the pricing page, so you can size the integration before anyone knows your name. The sandbox is not public: it is enabled by us as part of the API upgrade, which means it opens once your plan is active rather than before you buy. We say that plainly, because a sandbox you cannot reach on evaluation day is a real constraint on how you plan the build.

LabelGrid supports DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, and the same four versions apply in both directions. Delivery to stores uses the ERN suite on every plan; ERN import, either a one-time catalogue load or a continuous feed over SFTP or S3, runs on the API plans and on Custom Distribution, not on Solo, Basic or Pro, and it needs support to enable it plus a one-time import setup fee wherever it is turned on. Our MCP server is on npm as @labelgrid/mcp under MIT and listed on the public MCP registry, v0.4.0 with 30 tools across eight toolsets, and the @labelgrid/cli wraps the same public API.

We name the meters plainly, because they are how the bill moves. A tier is bounded by a track limit, by end-customer portals, and by a monthly royalty-processing cap measured in US dollars: $35,000 on Starter API, $115,000 on Growth API, $350,000 on Scale API. There is no overage fee on that cap; sustained excess starts a tier-upgrade conversation instead. Each standard API tier can add one pack of extra label 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.

Docs without a login

API documentation is public and readable before you talk to anyone at LabelGrid.

Sandbox timing

The sandbox is enabled as part of the API upgrade, so it opens once your plan is active.

ERN versions

LabelGrid supports ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, in delivery and in import.

Royalty processing cap

US dollars of royalties processed a month: $35,000 Starter API, $115,000 Growth API, $350,000 Scale API, no overage fee.

Advances are the clean concession: LabelGrid does not offer them, iGroove do. The rest of this section is what iGroove themselves sell around a release, and for some buyers that is the whole point of choosing a distributor. Here is where we would send you to them.

LabelGrid does not offer advances against future royalties. iGroove do: their iGroove Plus page offers “Flexible advances” and says “you can access advances any time, on terms that are fair, and without having to commit long-term”, with their FAQ setting the bar at 18 years of age, the necessary rights, and a calculated amount above EUR 1,000, regularly at a participation of iGroove of at least 14% over a release evaluation period of at least one year. Their Terms add the consequence: where an account carries a shortfall, the exploitation period extends until it is repaid. If you need money against a catalogue, go to them.

Their marketing services page sells playlist pitching and Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, streaming and Spotify promotion, opening “no matter what deal you have with us, you can get your releases promoted … with our marketing experts”. iGroove Plus adds a personal product manager on WhatsApp, email and phone, strategy and release planning, introductions in the music scene, help with profile verification, and Spotify Discovery Mode. Prices for those services are viewable in the account or agreed individually, and their app is where a customer runs the lot from a phone.

Their rate beats most of our ladder, and pretending otherwise would be easy to check. An iGroove customer on their standard deal keeps 92% of “settled and actually paid gross revenues from the exploitation of the Recordings minus sales tax or corresponding taxes”, with no annual or recurring cost, against 85% on LabelGrid Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro. Custom Distribution and the API tiers, at 95% on our own standard-DSP deals and 100% on yours, sit above it and are entered through a signed agreement. Few releases and modest earnings favour them.

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

Choose iGroove if you want a partner who does the work with you rather than a platform you operate: an advance against a catalogue you already have, a named product manager to plan a release with, and their marketing experts running the campaign for a fee. Choose them if you are putting out a few releases and would rather pay once per release and carry a share of revenue than pay a yearly fee at all. Choose them if your business runs from a phone, because that is what their app is built for.

Choose LabelGrid when the releases stop being only yours and the work becomes administration. Fifty labels on Custom Distribution, each with its own defaults and its own statement lines, or end-customer portals on the API tiers under your own brand, are a different shape of account from subaccounts for additional users. Automated splits and per-artist statements from Basic up mean the platform pays your collaborators rather than you doing it by hand every month.

Choose us, too, if a non-exclusive licence matters to your plan. You can distribute the same content elsewhere at the same time, no exclusivity survives termination, and taking a release down is something you do yourself.

You run a roster

You need many labels or many end-customer portals, each with its own settings and its own statement lines.

You pay collaborators

Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier.

You are integrating

Public API docs, four ERN versions, DDEX import on the API plans and Custom Distribution, and an open-source MCP server.

You want non-exclusive terms

The licence is global and non-exclusive, and no exclusivity survives termination.

These are the questions we would ask before signing anything in this category, LabelGrid included. Every one of them has a checkable answer.

01Ask what the plan is metered by, whether that is tracks, labels, end-customer portals or royalties processed in a month, and what happens at the moment you cross the meter rather than at renewal.

02Ask how much of the price you can read before anyone knows your name, and which parts are quoted at onboarding instead of published.

03Ask whether release review is part of the plan or an add-on, what it actually checks, and which plans it applies to, since a review that is optional on your tier is not a safety net.

04Ask what happens to your catalogue after the relationship ends: whether the licence is exclusive, how long any exclusivity outlives the contract, and whose consent a takedown needs in the meantime.

05Ask which DDEX ERN versions are supported and in which direction, then ask whether catalogue import is on the plan you are buying or on a plan above it, and what enabling it costs once.

06Ask whether there is a sandbox, when you get access to it relative to paying, and whether the documentation is readable without a login.

07Ask whether the AI and automation tooling is open source on a public registry or a closed integration you cannot inspect, and who is allowed to keep using it if you leave the platform.

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