Frequently asked questions
Who is behind Label Engine, and who is behind LabelGrid?
Label Engine's Terms of Use are headed "CREATE RECORDS, LLC TERMS OF USE FOR LABEL ENGINE" and state that the service "is owned by Create Records, LLC.". Their About page says Label Engine was "founded in 2008 with a single purpose: to reduce the number of time-consuming tasks involved in growing and operating a successful record label", and that it has been "acquired by Create Music Group in 2015"; their privacy policy applies to "Create Music Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliate businesses", and the footer of the pages we read carries the same group's copyright line. LabelGrid's contracting entity is Label Grid, LLC, formed in 2017, with its headquarters in Denver, Colorado. It is independently owned, with no major-label and no DSP parent.
Is LabelGrid cheaper than Label Engine?
That depends on what you are buying and when you pay for it. Their pricing page puts distribution at nothing up front, "without any advance fees", with the bullets "No subscription required." and "No additional fees.", free ISRC and UPC codes, and "Free use of all Label Engine services after the first distributed release." You settle afterwards: their pricing page prints "You keep: 82.5% Revenue share on distribution" and "80% Revenue share on YouTube content ID". Their Terms give the matching 17.5% transaction fee "By way of example only" and reserve the right to set rates "on a per label basis" at Label Engine's "sole discretion", so the pricing-page figure is the current rate, with the contract leaving room to vary it per label. The only subscription on their pricing page is Label Services at "$499 / year" or "or $49 / month". On our side every distribution plan and API tier carries a flat yearly fee listed on the pricing page. You keep 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo, 85% on 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 runs on Custom Distribution and the API tiers only. A percentage rises as your catalogue earns more, while a flat yearly fee steps with volume and then stops, and you can do that arithmetic on our published prices before you talk to anyone.
What is Label Engine's transaction fee a percentage of?
Their Terms answer that, and the answer matters more than the rate. Net Revenue is gross revenue "less any and all of Company's non overhead costs and expenses", a list that opens with "a distribution of Gross Revenue which Company shall be entitled to retain for its sole account" and continues through sales, use, excise and V.A.T. taxes, "reasonable reserves for physical records only", commissions payable to third parties including collection societies and agents, insurance costs, collection costs, "third party merchant costs (e.g., credit card, PayPal, or currency conversion costs)" and professional fees attributable to the rights granted. The transaction fee applies to what remains. LabelGrid defines a base too: our Terms state accounting fees in a range between 0 and 20% of net payable revenue paid to LabelGrid by the DSPs, depending on the subscription plan, and the per-plan rate is published on the pricing page. Read both definitions before you set two percentages side by side.
How do payouts work on each platform?
Their distribution page says you "request payments anytime via PayPal or bank transfer", and their Terms attach the floors to that: if you are owed "less than ten U.S. dollars (US$10) via Paypal or less than US$100 via Wire or ACH", the balance carries forward onto the following accounting statement. Those floors are fixed in their Terms. On our side, LabelGrid's terms allow a minimum payout threshold, and if one applies to your account we will let you know, with any balance below it carried forward to a later payment cycle. LabelGrid pays monthly, with the statement generated from the 21st, payments initiated between the 3rd and the 14th of the following month, and funds arriving three to seven business days after that. Bank charges sit with the customer on both sides: their Terms state that "Customer shall be responsible for any bank fees or related charges for the payment of any Royalties", and your own bank-side transfer and currency-conversion charges come out of a LabelGrid payout as well. Where we publish more than they do is the price list, because every plan and API tier carries a price you can read.
What happens to your catalogue when the arrangement ends?
Read the licence first. Their Terms have a customer accepted for distribution grant Label Engine "for as long as such Label Engine services are used, an exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-bearing, right" to exploit the recordings, with a limit stated in the same document: Label Engine "shall not have any right to do remixes, edits, alterations of the master tracks, graphic files, video clips or any other copyright protected materials". After the end, "Company retains the right to collect all monies derived from exploitations of Customer Content" that occurred before or during the term, for one year; a LabelGrid reserve may remain in place indefinitely while a claim, investigation, dispute or clawback risk is unresolved, including after termination, so on duration ours is the broader of the two. The licence you grant LabelGrid is global and non-exclusive, you may distribute the same recording elsewhere at the same time, and no exclusivity survives termination. Taking your own music down is self-serve: deselect the outlets on the release and save, after which full removal across platforms typically runs two to three weeks.
How do Label Engine's label services compare with LabelGrid's own tools?
The operations around distribution, and this is the heart of the comparison. Their accounting page sells processing "royalty statements from any store, any distributor, in any currency, in minutes, regardless of how large or complex the statements are", which is work on a third party's statements; LabelGrid's royalty accounting covers revenue distributed through LabelGrid, with statements, payouts and automated splits from Basic up and on every API tier. Their promotion page sends "visually-stunning, custom emails to all of your DJ, tastemaker, radio station, and blog contacts", with campaign analytics, SoundCloud upload and podcast hosting. Their demo system "allows you to create a unique URL and email address for your label", with folders for accepted, rejected or pending demos and auto-replies. For distribution clients they "will manage the transfer from previous distributors", and they offer to "Negotiate deals with YouTube promotional channels". What LabelGrid puts in your hands is tooling you operate: a landing page and smart link for every release with a Spotify pre-save before release day, optional fan email capture, direct posting to Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube and Instagram from the release row, and the same landing pages on your own domain through the WordPress plugin.
What does each platform publish for developers?
Their 13 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention an API, DDEX, ERN, an MCP server, a webhook, a sandbox or a white-label portal, and their About page describes a hosted application: "Our system is completely web-based, meaning there is no software to install". That records what their published material covers on the day we read it. It is not a statement about what exists, because their help centre and any in-app documentation were outside that capture and a private API or a partner programme would not appear in it. On the LabelGrid side: the Engine documentation is public and readable without a sales call, three API tiers are published as flat yearly fees, the sandbox opens once an API plan is active, Imprint puts the portal on your own brand and domain, and delivery uses the DDEX ERN message suite with support for ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2. ERN import over SFTP or S3 runs on the API plans and on Custom Distribution. The MCP server is open source under MIT, published as @labelgrid/mcp and listed on the public MCP registry as io.github.labelgrid/labelgrid-mcp.
How many labels and users does each platform allow?
Their pricing page states the ceiling for the Label Services subscription, which "includes all of Label Engine's powerful Accounting, Promotion and Demo Management services for up to 10 labels", and their About page says you can manage multiple labels and "set up unlimited user accounts to grant access to your entire team". LabelGrid counts labels per plan: 1 on Solo, 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro and 50 on Custom Distribution, with Solo, Basic and Pro moving up a tier once they reach the limit. The API tiers run the same meter higher, in registered labels, at 5 on Starter API, 25 on Growth API, 100 on Scale API and unlimited on Custom API, so it is one meter with a higher ceiling. Each standard API tier can add one fixed pack of extra label portals through support, 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth and 25 on Scale, and past one pack the answer is the next tier. Each label you create carries its own profile, default genres, P-line and C-line, publishers and outlet settings, and the statement export identifies the label per line.
Can you try either one, and is distribution automatic?
Both give you seven days. Their Terms describe a "Label Engine Free Trial" in which a "Customer may choose a 7-day initial term to use the Label Engine bundled services on a trial basis, including accounting, demo management, and promotional tools", and LabelGrid's self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial, so that is the same number on both sides rather than a difference. Distribution is a separate decision for both of us. Their Terms state that "distribution services are not automatically provided by Label Engine as part of the subscription" and must be applied for, and that "All music releases or other media shall be evaluated and accepted for distribution separately, on its own merits, by Label Engine." With us, every release on a distribution plan is reviewed by a person for quality, metadata and rights before delivery unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals, and API and third-party distribution require onboarding screening with KYC and KYB. Neither catalogue arrives unchecked, and neither of us hands out distribution with the trial.
What if my business does not fit LabelGrid's published plans?
There is a route for that, and its existence is public even though the figures are not. Custom deals are normally for a business that has outgrown the ceilings of the published plans on tracks, on labels, or on monthly royalty income. Negotiable: caps and ceilings, platform fees, bespoke packaging such as bulk label pricing for an operation running thousands of single-label artists, custom terms, and in special cases royalty retention. Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks by default and the cap is raised inside the deal, up to unlimited. Tell us what the business looks like and the answer comes back as a proposal rather than a tier.