Octiive Alternative: Infrastructure for Labels, Not an Artist Subscription

Short answer: Octiive sells a subscription to a self-releasing artist, at $29 a year for one artist, $190 a year for up to twenty, or $9 for a single with no subscription. For one artist releasing one record, theirs is cheaper and simpler than anything we sell. LabelGrid sells the infrastructure a label or a platform runs on: multi-label accounts, per-artist statements, a portal under your own brand and a documented API. Every Octiive value in the table below is quoted from one of their own published pages.

Octiive’s label package puts a roster on one account: up to twenty artists for $190 a year plus a one-off $49 label registration add-on, with releases listed under your own label name, and their FAQ describes monthly per-artist reports and royalties going to the account holder “to disburse based on your internal agreements with your own artists”. On LabelGrid each label holds its own profile, default genres, P-line and C-line, publishers and outlet settings and its own line on the statement, and from Basic up and on every API tier the splits run automatically, with LabelGrid issuing each artist’s statement and paying the collaborator directly rather than leaving you to send every payment yourself.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

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

Founded

Every Octiive value below is quoted or summarised from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read them. Where their pages do not state a dimension, or where our own public documentation cannot answer it in kind, the row is left out rather than guessed at.

Each of the 6 Octiive values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: www.octiive.com/faq, www.octiive.com/faq/getting-paid, www.octiive.com/music-funding, www.octiive.com/pricing, www.octiive.com/terms-conditions. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed (1 omitted here).

Audio scope is where this comparison turns on the product rather than the price. Dolby Atmos spatial-audio mixes and high-resolution masters are delivered on every standard LabelGrid plan, Solo, Basic, Pro and Custom Distribution, and on every API tier, at no extra charge and with no per-track fee. Atmos needs an ADM BWF master at 24-bit LPCM, 48 kHz, conforming to the Dolby Atmos Master ADM profile, with its own ISRC alongside the stereo master. Octiive’s FAQ states that they accept WAV or MP3 files and names a 16 bit, 44.1 khz WAV as their preferred format; their 13 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention spatial audio or high-resolution masters.

Travelling with it on a distribution plan: ISRC and UPC codes at no extra cost and yours to keep if you leave, a person reading every release for quality, metadata and rights before it goes out unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals, and dashboard analytics on every plan.

The limit, plainly: a subscribing Octiive customer keeps 100% of their Net Royalty Receipts and a customer distributing without a subscription keeps 92%, while a LabelGrid customer keeps 85% on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro. On the plans a $29 subscription is most likely to be weighed against, their number is the better one.

Published prices

Every distribution plan and API tier is priced on our site, including the Custom starting prices.

Public API docs

The API documentation is readable without a login or a sales call, before you buy anything.

Open-source tooling

An MIT-licensed MCP server on the public MCP registry, npm @labelgrid/mcp, with a companion CLI.

Royalty advances

Not offered. LabelGrid does not fund advances and has no financing partner for them.

LabelGrid Tools sits in the WordPress plugin directory, free to every account and needing no API plan: it syncs releases, artists and download gates every six hours and builds smart-link landing pages, Spotify pre-saves and gated downloads on your own domain. For accounts on an API tier, the same landing-page and short-link endpoints sit on the public API, alongside an open-source MCP server and a companion CLI.

LabelGrid self-serve plans are sized by tracks and by labels rather than by artists. Solo carries one label, Basic three, Pro five and Custom Distribution fifty, and each label holds its own logo, default genres, P-line and C-line, publishers, outlet settings and its own line on the royalty statement. Reaching the label limit on Solo, Basic or Pro moves you up a tier. Octiive meter the same decision by head count, at $29 a year for one artist, $69 for two to four and $190 for five to twenty, plus a one-off $49 label registration add-on.

A LabelGrid plan decides the share and the accounting. A customer keeps 85% of 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 DSP deals or their own Merlin membership through SOBO, available on Custom Distribution and the API tiers only. Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, and Solo carries neither. YouTube Content ID registration is available on all distribution plans, and Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals is split 80% to the artist with a 20% fee. Self-serve plans open with a 7-day free trial.

Labels per plan

Solo 1, Basic 3, Pro 5, Custom Distribution 50, each with its own settings and statement lines.

Splits and statements

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

Review before delivery

Every release on a distribution plan is read by a person unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Free trial

Self-serve plans open with a 7-day free trial, which carries no API or sandbox access.

Account structure decides whether a platform can carry your business at all, and the two companies publish different shapes of it.

Octiive’s $49 one-off label registration add-on registers your label name with their retail partners so that releases appear under it rather than under Octiive, and their Executive plan carries five to twenty artists at $190 a year. Their FAQ describes monthly reports broken down by artist, showing downloads and streams with date, retailer and country, states that “All sales are reported to SoundScan”, and says the reports and royalties go to the account holder to disburse under their own agreements with their artists.

Imprint is our white-label portal: your brand on your own domain, with every end customer in their own workspace rather than a row inside yours. Each workspace has its own portal login and the same capability as any other, composed by you rather than inherited down a tree, and an artist who wants their own label can sign up on your domain and become their own end customer. Imprint is scoped and quoted at onboarding rather than priced on the site.

The published plans are the floor of a conversation. Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks by default and the cap is raised inside the deal, up to unlimited. On the API tiers the published limit counts end-customer portals, not your own labels: 5, 25, 100 and unlimited across Starter, Growth, Scale and Custom API. Each standard tier can extend that once through support, by a tier-fixed pack: five more on Starter, ten on Growth, twenty-five on Scale. Past one pack the answer is the next tier or a custom deal.

Our shape has a cost worth naming: an artist releasing only their own music pays for account structure they will never use, which is what Solo exists for, and one Octiive account is the simpler thing to run.

The API documentation is public and readable without a login or a sales call, and all four API tiers are priced on the site. The sandbox is separate: LabelGrid enables it at the API upgrade, so it opens once the plan is active rather than before you buy. DDEX ERN import, a catalogue load or a continuous SFTP or S3 feed, runs on the API plans and on Custom Distribution, with a one-time setup fee wherever it is enabled, and not on Solo, Basic or Pro. Delivery goes out over the ERN message suite on every distribution plan, and the supported versions in both directions are 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2.

Each API tier carries a track limit, an end-customer portal limit and a monthly cap on the royalties it processes, in US dollars: $35,000 on Starter API, $115,000 on Growth API and $350,000 on Scale API. Sustained excess opens a tier-upgrade conversation, not an overage invoice, and every meter is negotiable in a custom deal. Their 13 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention a developer API, an SDK, webhooks, a sandbox, an MCP server, a white-label portal, DDEX ERN ingest or a SOBO route, the sell-on-behalf-of route we run on Custom Distribution and the API tiers. No developer-facing page was requested in that capture.

Public documentation

The API docs are readable without a login, a sales call or a qualification form.

Sandbox access

LabelGrid enables the sandbox at the API upgrade, so it opens once the plan is active.

DDEX versions

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

MCP and CLI

An open-source MIT MCP server on the public registry, plus a CLI over the same public API.

Three places where their answer beats ours, stated the way their own pages state them.

Their pricing page puts a solo artist on Essential at $29 a year, two to four artists on Pro at $69 and five to twenty on Executive at $190, with monthly cards for Essential and Pro at $5 and $8. For an artist releasing their own records, and for a small label that wants its roster on one account, that is cheaper and simpler than anything LabelGrid sells, and it is a real price rather than the opening of a negotiation.

Their Terms state that while a subscription is active the rights holder receives “100% of the Net Royalty Receipts”, and that a customer distributing without one, through the one-time or pay-per-project options, receives 92%. Net Royalty Receipts are defined as “the total royalties collected, less standard DSP fees and distribution costs incurred in processing and delivering” the content. Both of their rates sit above the 85% a LabelGrid customer keeps on Solo, the 85% on Basic and the 90% on Pro.

Their funding page publishes advance funding with Sound Royalties “WITH OFFERS RANGING FROM $5K-$20M+”, the artist keeping “full ownership of your masters” and recoupment described as a fixed fee over a fixed term. An in-platform AdvanceNow covers members whose catalogue earned between $1K and $5K over the last twelve months, approved for auto-advances up to $5K and funded in as little as three business days. LabelGrid does not offer advances at all.

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

Choose Octiive if you are releasing your own music and the account only ever has to hold your own catalogue. Their shape suits an artist who wants a $29 subscription or a $9 single rather than a platform to administer, a small label content to receive one set of reports and pay its artists under its own agreements, and anyone who needs an advance against future royalties, which LabelGrid does not offer in any form.

It also suits a buyer who wants the headline share as high as it goes on a cheap plan. A subscribing customer keeps 100% of their Net Royalty Receipts there and a customer distributing without a subscription keeps 92%, while a LabelGrid customer keeps 85% on Solo, 85% on Basic and 90% on Pro.

Choose LabelGrid when the thing you are running is larger than one catalogue: several labels, each with its own settings and its own lines on the statement; collaborators who should be paid by the platform rather than by you; a portal under your own brand; or the REST API and DDEX feed of an API tier underneath a product of your own.

More than one label

You run three, five or fifty labels and each needs its own settings and statement lines.

Artists to pay

From Basic up, LabelGrid issues each artist statement and pays the collaborator instead of you.

Your own brand

Imprint puts your portal on your own domain, every end customer in their own workspace.

Something to build

Public API docs, four priced tiers, DDEX ERN in and out, an open-source MCP server and a CLI.

Ask these of us as readily as of anyone else. The answers are the comparison; the marketing is not.

01Ask what the bill is metered by, whether that is releases, tracks, artists, labels, end-customer portals or royalties processed, and what happens at the moment you cross the meter rather than a year later.

02Ask whether you can read every price, including the largest tier, without a call or a qualification form, and whether the price you read covers the things you will actually need.

03Ask whether a person reads each release for quality, metadata and rights before it goes to the stores, whether that is part of the plan or an add-on, and what exempts an account from it.

04Ask what happens to your catalogue if you stop paying, and what a customer-requested takedown actually involves: who does it, how long each stage takes, and whether removal works per track or per release.

05Ask which DDEX ERN versions the platform supports, in which direction, on which plans, and whether turning on an import costs a setup fee.

06Ask whether there is a sandbox, when it opens relative to signing anything, and whether the API documentation can be read before anyone there knows your name.

07Ask whether the automation and AI tooling is open source and auditable, where the package is published, and what licence it carries.

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, the API documentation is public, and Imprint is scoped and quoted at onboarding. Each Octiive value in the table above comes 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.