Label Engine Alternative: A Flat Fee, Not a Share

Short answer: you enter Label Engine free and settle later, through the transaction fee on Net Revenue their Terms give “By way of example only” at 17.5% and reserve “on a per label basis” at their “sole discretion”. We charge a percentage on the self-serve plans too: you keep 85% on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro. On Custom Distribution and every API tier you pay a flat yearly fee instead. Every Label Engine value below is quoted from their own pages, linked beneath the table.

What happens to your catalogue if you leave?

A customer accepted for distribution grants Label Engine, in their Terms, “for as long as such Label Engine services are used, an exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-bearing, right” to exploit the recordings, and the same document sets a limit on it: Label Engine “shall not have any right to do remixes, edits, alterations of the master tracks”. The licence you grant LabelGrid is global and non-exclusive, so you may distribute the same recording elsewhere at the same time, and no exclusivity survives termination.

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

THEIR PAGES, OUR PAGES

Row by row, from published documents

Every Label Engine value below is quoted from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read it: the pricing page, the distribution and accounting pages, the About page and the Terms of Use. Rows we could not source from a published document on both sides are left out rather than guessed at.

Feature LabelGrid Label Engine
What the company sells Three products on one backend: self-serve distribution for labels and artists, Imprint (the white-label portal on the customer's own domain) and Engine (the API). Royalty accounting, per-artist statements and automated splits run from Basic up and on every API tier; Solo carries neither splits nor per-artist statements. Four bundled modules: distribution, accounting, promotion, demo management
What it costs to start Every LabelGrid distribution plan and API tier carries a published flat yearly fee, listed on the pricing page. The self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial; there is no free entry into distribution. Distribution: no advance fee, no subscription
What the customer keeps A published per-plan share rather than a rate set per account: you keep 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro, and 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 available on Custom Distribution and the API tiers only. The platform fee is a flat yearly amount that steps with volume instead of a percentage that grows with the catalogue. Terms § 6.4, their wording: "By way of example only, Label Engine currently charges a transaction fee of 17.5%" on Net Revenue, with rates set "on a per label basis" at Label Engine’s "sole discretion"
How many labels Labels per plan: Solo 1, Basic 3, Pro 5, Custom Distribution 50. The API tiers meter something different — end-customer portals, at 5 on Starter API, 25 on Growth API, 100 on Scale API and unlimited on Custom API — and each standard API tier can add one fixed pack of extra label portals through support: 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth, 25 on Scale. Up to 10 labels on the Label Services subscription
API, white-label and DDEX Public API documentation readable without a sales call, with the sandbox opening once an API plan is active; an open-source MCP server (MIT, npm @labelgrid/mcp) listed on the public MCP registry; Imprint, the white-label portal, on the customer's own brand and domain; and DDEX ERN delivery to stores as part of distribution, with DDEX ERN import available on the API plans and on Custom Distribution after onboarding. LabelGrid supports ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2. Their 13 distinct captured pages, read 2026-09-23, do not mention an API, a white-label portal or DDEX
Exclusivity The distribution licence LabelGrid takes is global and non-exclusive: you may distribute the same content elsewhere at the same time, and no exclusivity survives termination. Distribution licence is exclusive for as long as the service is used
Tools without distribution LabelGrid publishes a standalone no-distribution plan of its own: GATE, which carries one label with catalogue and release management plus the WordPress catalogue export behind it, and which cannot deliver to DSPs or collect royalty payments. Those WordPress features are also included with every standard plan and every API tier. LabelGrid's royalty accounting covers revenue distributed through LabelGrid, with statements, payouts and automated splits from Basic up and on every API tier. Label Services (no distribution): $499/year or $49/month, up to 10 labels
ISRC and UPC codes ISRC and UPC codes are included at no extra cost, assigned automatically when a release is created — an ISRC for each track, a UPC for each release — and they are yours to keep if you later switch distributors. A customer who already holds codes can enter those instead. Free ISRC and UPC codes; no set-up, distribution or subscription fee

Each of the 8 Label Engine values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: label-engine.com/about_us.php, label-engine.com/digital-music-distribution.php, label-engine.com/pricing.php, label-engine.com/terms_of_use.php. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

WHAT YOU ARE BUYING

A hosted application, or a platform to build on

Their About page describes what Label Engine is: “Our system is completely web-based, meaning there is no software to install”. 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. That is a statement about what their published material covers and nothing more. Their help centre and any in-app documentation were not part of that capture, and a private API or a partner programme would not appear in it.

LabelGrid publishes three products on one backend: self-serve distribution for labels and artists, Imprint on your own brand and domain, and Engine, the API. The Engine documentation is readable without a sales call, the sandbox opens once an API plan is active, and the MCP server is MIT licensed on the public MCP registry. Delivery to stores uses the DDEX ERN message suite, and we support ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2.

Which shape you need follows from the work. A hosted application is enough when you want your label run for you. Building on top of a platform needs surfaces you can read, test and version, and those have to exist in public before you commit a roadmap to them.

What you can read today

Published prices

Every distribution plan and API tier has a flat yearly fee, listed on the pricing page.

Public API docs

Read the Engine documentation without a sales call; the sandbox opens once an API plan is active.

Open-source tooling

@labelgrid/mcp is MIT licensed on the public MCP registry.

DDEX ERN

Delivery on every distribution plan, and ERN import on the API plans plus Custom Distribution.

THE PLUGIN, THEN THE API

Your catalogue on your own site

The LabelGrid WordPress plugin syncs your releases, artists and download gates into your own site every six hours, on any account and at no extra cost. Past the plugin there is the public API, which needs an API plan and a token: with one, @labelgrid/mcp and @labelgrid/cli let you publish a discography or script a bulk update against your own catalogue.

FOR LABELS AND ARTISTS

What a distribution plan carries here

LabelGrid plans are annual and published. You keep 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro, and the fee for the plan is the fee for the year. Inside one: Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters at no extra charge on every standard plan and every API tier, automated royalty splits and per-artist statements from Basic up and on every API tier, with Solo carrying neither, and ISRC and UPC codes assigned automatically at no extra cost and yours to keep if you move distributor. Every release on a distribution plan is checked by a person for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals. Self-serve plans open with a seven-day free trial.

For this reader the difference is not the feature list. Their About page sells four bundled modules, distribution with “Accounting”, “Promotion” and “Demo Management” around it, and a label on Label Engine pays for that bundle out of what its catalogue earns. You pay LabelGrid once a year instead, and the platform fee steps with volume rather than rising with every royalty line. If the gap in your operation is the day-to-day running of a label rather than the platform under it, their bundle is a coherent thing to buy.

Inside a distribution plan

Release review

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

Splits and statements

Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, never on Solo.

Atmos and hi-res

Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters go out at no extra charge on every standard plan and API tier.

ISRC and UPC

Codes are assigned automatically at no cost, and they stay yours if you change distributor.

FOR WHITE-LABEL OPERATORS

Many labels on one account, or a portal each

Label Engine’s shape is one account with labels inside it, and their About page says you can manage multiple labels and “set up unlimited user accounts to grant access to your entire team”. The LabelGrid shape gives each of your customers a workspace of its own.

Labels inside one account

Their pricing page states the ceiling for the Label Services subscription: it “includes all of Label Engine’s powerful Accounting, Promotion and Demo Management services for up to 10 labels”. Team access is separate from that count, and their About page puts no limit on it, offering “unlimited user accounts” for the people who work on those labels. One login set, one account, the labels held inside it.

A workspace for each customer

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

Where the label ceilings sit

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 at their limit. The API tiers meter a different thing, the number of end-customer portals, at 5 on Starter API, 25 on Growth API, 100 on Scale API and unlimited on Custom API. 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; past one pack the answer is the next tier.

The ladder on the pricing page is the floor of that conversation rather than its ceiling. A business outside those ceilings gets a custom deal covering caps, platform fees and bespoke packaging, bulk label pricing for an operation running thousands of single-label artists being a real example, with the figures agreed under NDA.

FOR API BUILDERS

Read the docs before you buy a plan

The Engine documentation is public: no login, no qualification form, and no call before you can see what the endpoints do. Three standard tiers are published as flat yearly fees, Custom API starts from a published figure plus $0.025 per track per month, and the sandbox is issued once the plan is active, after onboarding screening and KYC or KYB, rather than ahead of purchase. Delivery uses DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, and ERN import over SFTP or S3 runs on the API plans and on Custom Distribution, enabled through support with a one-time setup fee.

The meters are where the bill moves, so here they are. Each standard tier carries a track limit, a count of end-customer portals, and a monthly cap on royalties processed measured in US dollars: $35,000 on Starter API, $115,000 on Growth API and $350,000 on Scale API. Crossing a track or portal limit moves you up the published ladder, sustained excess on the royalty cap starts a tier-upgrade conversation rather than an overage charge, and every meter is negotiable in a custom deal.

Above the API, @labelgrid/mcp is MIT licensed and listed on the public MCP registry as io.github.labelgrid/labelgrid-mcp, with @labelgrid/cli wrapping the same endpoints; both need an API plan and a token. Read either before it sees your catalogue.

What an API tier meters

Tracks

Each standard tier carries a track limit; Custom API adds $0.025 per track per month above its cap.

End-customer portals

These count end-customer portals rather than your own labels: 5, 25 and 100 on the standard tiers, unlimited on Custom API.

Royalty processing

A monthly cap in US dollars of royalties processed: $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000.

Sandbox

Issued once an API plan is active, after onboarding screening and KYC or KYB, not before.

WHERE LABEL ENGINE WINS

Three reasons to choose Label Engine

Three places where Label Engine is the better answer, each of them taken from one of their own published pages.

Nothing to pay at the door

Their pricing page puts distribution “without any advance fees”. The bullets say “No subscription required.” and “No additional fees.”, ISRC and UPC codes come free, and their services are free to use after the first distributed release. You settle afterwards. Their Terms give the transaction fee on Net Revenue “By way of example only” at 17.5%, and reserve the right to set rates “on a per label basis” at Label Engine’s “sole discretion”. With us you keep 85% on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro, and every LabelGrid plan carries a published fee, so at zero up-front cost their door is cheaper than anything we sell.

The tools without the distribution

Their Label Services subscription is sold at “$499 / year” or “or $49 / month” to a customer who already distributes somewhere else: “Don’t require distribution? No worries!”. It covers their Accounting, Promotion and Demo Management services for up to 10 labels. We publish a standalone no-distribution plan too, GATE, but it is a narrower thing: one label with catalogue management and the WordPress export behind it, and no DSP delivery or royalty collection on it. If the job is running a label’s operations while its distribution sits somewhere else, theirs is the purchase, and it is a different purchase rather than a cheaper version of ours.

Notice before they end it

Their Terms let Label Engine terminate “For convenience upon giving 60 days advance notice to Customer or any individual User”, after which a customer has “30 days after the effective date given by Company” to download copies of their content. LabelGrid may terminate a membership or subscription for any reason by sending notice to your registered email, and our Terms state no notice period at all. On this one theirs is the more specific promise and ours is the broader right.

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

WHICH ONE

Choose Label Engine if, choose LabelGrid if

Choose Label Engine if what you need is the running of a label. Their accounting page sells processing “royalty statements from any store, any distributor, in any currency, in minutes”, which is work on someone else’s statements as much as their own. Their promotion page sends “visually-stunning, custom emails to all of your DJ, tastemaker, radio station, and blog contacts”. Their demo system “allows you to create a unique URL and email address for your label”. For distribution clients they “will manage the transfer from previous distributors”.

Choose them if you want to begin with nothing to pay, and if their reference labels look like yours. The testimonials on their homepage come from Kannibalen Records, Insomniac Music Group and Disciple, one of which describes growing “from one label to now over twenty imprints”, and four of the opt-in platforms named in their Terms are electronic or DJ platforms. That is the buyer they advertise to, and it is a buyer they have served since 2008.

Choose them, too, if a hosted application is the whole requirement. “Our system is completely web-based, meaning there is no software to install”, and for a great many labels nothing more than that is needed.

Choose LabelGrid if

You want a flat fee

On Custom Distribution and every API tier you pay a flat yearly fee and keep 95% of royalties from our standard-DSP deals.

You distribute for others

Each of your customers gets its own portal, catalogue, analytics and statements, partitioned from every other.

You build on an API

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

You want it non-exclusive

Our distribution licence is global and non-exclusive, and no exclusivity survives termination of the agreement.

BEFORE YOU CHOOSE ANYONE

Seven questions worth asking whoever you pick

Put these to us as readily as to anyone else.

01Ask what moves the bill: whether you pay a percentage or a flat price, whether that percentage is a term of the plan or a rate set per account, and who is entitled to change it.

02Ask what the percentage is a percentage of. A rate tells you nothing until you have read the definition of the revenue it applies to and the deductions taken out before it lands.

03Ask whether you can read the price for a business your size without booking a call, and at which rung on the ladder the published number stops and a quotation begins.

04Ask whether the distribution licence is exclusive, and whether any exclusivity or collection right outlives the agreement itself.

05Ask who looks at a release before it is delivered, whether that is a person rather than a validator, which plans it covers, and what exempts an account from it.

06Ask which DDEX ERN versions they deliver, whether they can ingest ERN from you, and which plans carry each direction.

07Ask when the sandbox arrives, before or after you pay, and whether the tooling you would point at your catalogue is open source enough to read, audit and fork first.

Frequently asked questions

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.

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 Terms state “By way of example only, Label Engine currently charges a transaction fee of 17.5% (seventeen and one half percent) on Net Revenue”, and the same clause reserves the right to set transaction fee rates “on a per label basis” at Label Engine’s “sole discretion”, so the published number is an example rather than a fixed term. Their pricing page carries one subscription price, 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.

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.

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 published, which is more than LabelGrid publishes: our Terms reserve a minimum payout threshold shown in your dashboard, and as of September 2026 no minimum is in effect, so cleared earnings pay out each 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 count something else, the number of end-customer portals, at 5 on Starter API, 25 on Growth API, 100 on Scale API and unlimited on Custom API, so the two figures are not the same meter. 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.

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.

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.

See the price before you talk to us

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