Record Union Alternative: Label Infrastructure, Not Per-Release Subscriptions

Short answer: Record Union sell a yearly subscription per release to self-releasing artists and small labels, and for one artist putting out one single they are cheaper and simpler than anything LabelGrid sells. LabelGrid sells the layer a label or a distributor runs on: a plan bought for the account with a track allowance and a label allowance, a documented REST API on the API tiers, and a portal your own customers sign into under your brand. The rest of this page sets their published pages against ours.

Every release you own carries its own yearly subscription for as long as it keeps earning. Record Union state that meter plainly in their pricing FAQ: “The packages we offer are on a per-release basis, meaning a subscription is required for each release you distribute. Each subscription automatically renews each year.” Past twelve tracks a release also carries $1.50 per extra track per year, which their own worked example calls the yearly renewal cost. On a LabelGrid plan, beyond the allowance you pay $0.15 per track per year on Pro and $0.25 on Custom Distribution up to 10,000 tracks, while Solo and Basic carry no overage at all and move up a tier at their limits. Those are two different meters, and the meter is what to compare, not a total for a catalogue neither company can guess at.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

LabelGrid fee to issue a payout

Founded

Each Record Union value below is quoted from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read them. Where their pages state nothing we can bind to a sentence, the row is left out rather than guessed at.

Each of the 10 Record Union values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: intercom.help/record-union/en/articles/1052719-how-much-does-it-cost-to-release-music-via-record-union, intercom.help/record-union/en/articles/9310673-what-is-youtube-content-id, www.recordunion.com/, www.recordunion.com/music-distribution/, www.recordunion.com/pricing/, www.recordunion.com/royalty-splits/, www.recordunion.com/terms-and-conditions/. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

Record Union’s Terms grant them an “Exclusive right to make E-music Files and the non exclusive right to make Clips, embodying the Recordings available on the Internet”, together with the right to sublicense those rights to their retail partners. Their document carries two qualifiers that travel with it: the grant runs during the Term and throughout the Territory, and it “does not constitute a transfer of ownership”. Their pricing page states it the other way round, in their own words: “Copyright ownership and control of your distribution and publishing will always remain 100% yours.” Both sentences are theirs, and an owner can grant an exclusive licence and still be the owner.

The licence LabelGrid takes is global and non-exclusive. You may put the same recordings through another distributor at the same time, and no exclusivity survives termination of the agreement.

That difference decides things a price cannot. If part of your catalogue is committed to a territory deal, a sync agent or a second distributor, the shape of the licence is the question you need answered before the rate is worth discussing. Ours is written into the terms anyone can read before signing up.

Non-exclusive, worldwide

The distribution licence LabelGrid takes is global and non-exclusive on every plan, so the same recordings can go through another distributor at the same time.

After you leave

No exclusivity survives termination, so nothing of yours stays tied to LabelGrid afterwards.

Record Union’s homepage says of their own: “With Smart Links from Linkfire, just share one link and fans can listen to your tracks on their favorite music service. Smart Links are included free!” Ours run on your own domain and on the public API. The LabelGrid Tools plugin syncs your catalogue into your own WordPress site and builds release landing pages and Spotify pre-saves there; those smart links and pre-saves are on the public API as well, so the plugin is a convenience rather than the only way to them. The MCP server is open source on npm under MIT and listed on the public MCP registry, so Claude, Cursor or any MCP client can read the catalogue you already have, and the companion CLI wraps the same API for scripting.

Their 14 distinct captured pages, read on 23 September 2026, describe a per-release self-serve product for artists and labels. No Record Union SOBO route, developer API, white-label portal, DDEX or ERN interface, reseller or sub-label structure, sandbox or webhook surface is described in them. That is a statement about what their published material covers, which is not the same thing as what a company offers.

What a LabelGrid plan is built around is the catalogue behind the release. The label allowance comes with the plan: one label on Solo, three on Basic, five on Pro and fifty on Custom Distribution. Both sides do splits, and ours run from Basic up and on every API tier alongside per-artist statements, not on Solo or GATE, while their captured pages tie the feature to neither of their packages. Both sides also check a release before it goes out; theirs is a compliance check against store guidelines, and ours is a manual review of quality, metadata and rights on every distribution plan at no extra cost, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals. Both sides register YouTube Content ID as well, and ours is available on every distribution plan. Self-serve plans open with a seven-day free trial.

The limit is worth saying out loud. This is a different product for a different buyer, it costs more than $19 a year, and an artist releasing one single has no use for any of it.

Manual release review

A person checks audio, metadata and rights before delivery unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Statements and splits

Per-artist statements and automated splits on Basic, Pro, Custom Distribution and every API tier.

Content ID

Registration on all distribution plans, for original content you fully own or control.

Two account shapes and a third route for when neither of them fits. This is where the two products stop overlapping, and where our own model costs you something worth knowing about.

On Record Union the buyer and the operator are the same person: an artist or a label pays for each release and sends it out themselves. Above the ladder their pricing FAQ offers a conversation, “If you have a large catalogue or you work with very high volumes of new releases, we can set up custom pricing for you”, and we publish the same kind of route. No portal an operator runs under their own brand is described in their 14 distinct captured pages, read on 23 September 2026.

Imprint is the LabelGrid white-label portal: your brand on your domain, with every end customer in its own workspace rather than a row inside yours. Each workspace is one label with its own logins, and an artist who wants their own label can sign up on your domain and become their own end customer. Capability is identical across workspaces, composed by you rather than inherited down a tree. Imprint is quoted at onboarding.

The published plans are the floor of a conversation rather than its ceiling. Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks and the cap is raised in the deal, up to unlimited. On the API tiers the label meter counts end-customer portals rather than your own labels, and each standard tier can add one pack of extra portals through support, fixed per tier at 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth and 25 on Scale, with the next tier up the answer past that one pack. Caps, 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. Signed numbers stay private.

Here is what our model costs you: a label customer on LabelGrid does not get a supervised tier of artists underneath them, because the account structure has no artist scope. An artist who does not take a label of their own is a contributor credit inside someone else’s workspace. If that hierarchy is the thing you are buying, say so early and we will tell you whether the custom route reaches it.

Engine is the distribution API, and its documentation is public with no login and no qualification form in front of it. Three standard tiers and Custom API are priced on the pricing page. LabelGrid delivers to stores over DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, and imports catalogue over the same four versions on the API plans and on Custom Distribution, after technical onboarding and a one-time setup fee for that feature. A sandbox comes with the plan once it is active.

The meters are worth owning honestly, because they are what moves your bill. A plan is sized by a track limit and a label limit, and the API tiers cap the royalties processed in a month at $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000. Sustained excess triggers a tier-upgrade conversation rather than an overage fee. Custom API carries a custom cap with $0.025 per track per month beyond it, and every one of these numbers is negotiable in a custom deal.

The tooling is inspectable before you commit to it: the MCP server is MIT-licensed, published on npm as @labelgrid/mcp at v0.4.0 with 30 tools across eight toolsets, and listed on the public MCP registry. It needs an API plan, a token and Node 20 or newer. On the API tiers you keep 95% of standard-DSP royalties earned through LabelGrid’s deals and 100% of what you earn on your own direct deals or your own Merlin membership.

Public docs

The API documentation is public, with no login and no qualification call in the way.

Sandbox with the plan

A sandbox comes with the plan once it is active, rather than before purchase.

DDEX delivery and import

Delivery to stores on ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, and catalogue import over DDEX on the API plans and on Custom Distribution.

Open-source tooling

The MCP server is MIT-licensed on npm and listed on the public MCP registry.

Three places where Record Union is the better answer, taken from their own pages. There are more: their account is free until you release, they run an A&R referral programme, and they publish an EPK product.

Their pricing page prices World Domination, their full package, by track count: “1-2 tracks $19/yr”, “3-5 tracks $24/yr”, “6-12 tracks $29/yr”, then $1.50 per additional track per year. Top Dog, their reduced-platform package, starts at $14 a year for one or two tracks. Their homepage adds “Join free today! Pay nothing until you’re ready to release your tracks.” For an artist putting out one single, that is cheaper than any LabelGrid plan and easier to buy. That artist is not who we build for.

Their Terms state: “Record Union shall pay you a royalty rate of 85 % up to 92,5 % of the Gross Receipts, as calculated below.” Their floor is the same 85% a LabelGrid customer keeps on Solo and Basic, and their ceiling of 92.5% is above the 90% a Pro customer keeps. On their side the rate is chosen and paid for per recording, since their Terms say “you may choose what royalty rate you want to pay”, where ours is simply the plan rate. On self-serve retention they match us at the bottom and beat us at the top.

Their Terms: “If you do not pay the Renewal fee, Record Union may put your Recordings in Sleep Mode. Sleep Mode means that your release will still be available on Music Stores but you will not earn any royalties until you pay the Renewal fee.” The release stays online and stops earning, though their help centre adds that they may also decide to remove it from the services. A LabelGrid subscription unpaid for more than sixty days can end with the content removed and the account suspended, on any plan, so takedown is on both menus and ours is the blunter default.

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

Choose Record Union if you are a self-releasing artist with a handful of records and you want one price per release, paid once a year. Their door costs nothing until you release. Their payout floor is published and low, $1 on PayPal and $5 on bank transfer for most countries; LabelGrid’s terms reserve a minimum threshold displayed in the dashboard rather than publishing one, and as of 24 September 2026 no minimum is in effect.

Choose them if a referral programme is part of your plan. Their A&R page states that an A&R can earn “up to 7.5% of the royalties earned by the artists you sign up”, paid by Record Union and, in their words, not affecting the recruited artist’s royalties. Record Union also publishes an EPK product, so choose them if you want one published alongside the release. Choose them, too, if a release that stays live earning 0% suits you better than a takedown, bearing in mind their help centre says they may remove it as well.

Choose LabelGrid when the thing you are running is a catalogue and a business rather than a release, and when you need to read the whole price on a page first.

You run labels

You need several labels on one account, three on Basic, five on Pro or fifty on Custom Distribution, accounted for separately and paid out separately.

You build on APIs

You want public docs, a sandbox with the plan and DDEX delivery, priced on the page.

You resell distribution

You want your own brand and domain, with every end customer in its own workspace.

You keep options open

You need a non-exclusive licence so the same recordings can go elsewhere at the same time.

Ask these of us as readily as of anyone else. The answers are the part a comparison table cannot hold.

01Ask what the plan is metered by, whether that is releases, tracks, labels or royalties processed, and what happens at the moment you cross the meter rather than at the next renewal.

02Ask whether you can read the full price of everything you actually need without a call, and whether the figure on the page is the price or a starting point.

03Ask whether a person checks audio, metadata and rights before delivery, whether that happens on every plan, and whether it is charged for separately.

04Ask whether the distribution licence is exclusive, how long it runs for, and what survives after you terminate the agreement.

05Ask what happens to a live release if you stop paying: does it come down, does it stay up earning nothing, and can you recover the royalties from that gap.

06Ask which DDEX ERN versions the platform supports, whether import and delivery are both covered and on which plans, and whether a sandbox exists before real releases go through it.

07Ask whether the AI and developer tooling is open source and inspectable, and under which licence.

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 Record Union value above is quoted from one of the pages linked beneath the table, read on 23 September 2026. If any of it is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.