SoundCloud for Artists Alternative: Infrastructure for a Catalogue

Short answer: SoundCloud for Artists, the product formerly called Repost by SoundCloud, is a consumer subscription on a streaming service SoundCloud owns, with distribution built into it. LabelGrid sells the infrastructure underneath a catalogue: self-serve distribution, Imprint the white-label portal, and Engine the API. If you are one artist releasing your own music, theirs is cheaper and simpler than anything we sell. Every SoundCloud for Artists value in the table below comes from their own published pages, linked and dated.

Their published ladder meters distribution by cadence, per artist: nothing on Basic Free, “2 tracks / month” on Artist at $3.25 a month, and “Unlimited” on Artist Pro at $8.25 a month. LabelGrid meters the catalogue and the label count instead, so Solo carries 1 label, Basic 3, Pro 5 and Custom Distribution 50, each label with its own defaults and its own lines on the statement, and a back catalogue arrives as tracks rather than as a queue of months.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

LabelGrid fee to issue a payout

Founded

Each SoundCloud for Artists value below is taken from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read it. Where their published material leaves a dimension unstated, the row is left out rather than guessed.

Each of the 9 SoundCloud for Artists values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/guide, soundcloud.com/getstarted/distribution, soundcloud.com/getstarted/pricing. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

SoundCloud publishes a versioned API with public documentation, an API Explorer, a changelog and OpenAPI material, authenticated with OAuth 2.1 and PKCE required for the code exchange. Their guide states its own scope: “The SoundCloud API provides endpoints for authentication, track upload and playback, social features, and search.” The sections are uploading tracks, playing tracks, comments, follow and like, search and pagination. That is an API for putting audio on SoundCloud and reading it back, and it is a good one.

Engine is a distribution API. It creates releases, delivers them to stores and returns royalty and analytics data over the same public, documented endpoints, with DDEX ERN import in 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 on the API plans and on Custom Distribution. Both sets of documentation are readable without a login; our sandbox opens once an API plan is active.

One money row separates the two, and it is worth naming at its true size. SoundCloud discloses a payout-processor charge on each payout, “as low as $0.50 USD”, in the same paragraph as the 100% share. LabelGrid adds nothing of its own to issue a payout, and you still pay your own bank and currency-conversion costs. Below the point where a second label, a back catalogue or a delivery API matters, their $39 a year for two tracks a month is the better buy.

Their API docs

Public and versioned, with an Explorer and a changelog; the guide covers upload, playback, social features and search.

Our API docs

Readable without a login, and the sandbox is switched on once an API plan is active.

DDEX ERN import

Versions 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, on the API plans and on Custom Distribution.

Payout charges

LabelGrid adds no payout, processing or withdrawal charge of its own on any plan.

The LabelGrid WordPress plugin pulls releases, artists and download gates into your own site every six hours and builds smart-link landing pages, Spotify pre-saves and gated downloads. It runs on every LabelGrid account at no extra cost and needs no API plan. The same catalogue is reachable through @labelgrid/mcp, our MIT-licensed MCP server on the public registry, and the @labelgrid/cli companion, both of which run on the public API and do need an API plan and a token.

A LabelGrid distribution plan is a published annual fee with the feature list attached to it, and the self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial. You keep 85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo and Basic and 90% on Pro. On Custom Distribution and on every API tier you keep 95% of standard-DSP royalties earned through LabelGrid’s own deals, and 100% of what you earn on your own DSP deals or through SOBO. SoundCloud for Artists states 100% of distribution and monetisation earnings on both paid plans, so on the headline rate they are ahead of our self-serve ladder, and we are not going to dress that up.

What arrives with the plan rather than on top of it: Dolby Atmos mixes and hi-res masters on every standard plan and every API tier at no extra charge, ISRCs and UPCs at no extra cost and yours to keep if you leave, and YouTube Content ID registration on every distribution plan, where you keep 80% of Content ID and user-generated-content revenue earned through LabelGrid’s own deals and LabelGrid’s fee is 20%. Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, and Solo carries neither. A person checks quality, metadata and rights on every distribution plan before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

What you keep

85% of standard-DSP royalties on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro, then 95% or 100% on Custom Distribution and the API tiers.

Audio and identifiers

Dolby Atmos, hi-res masters, ISRCs and UPCs at no extra charge on every standard plan and every API tier.

Splits and statements

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

Human release review

Metadata and rights checked by a person on every distribution plan before delivery, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Running other people’s music is a different job from releasing your own, and the two companies answer it from opposite ends of the same market.

SoundCloud’s published artist ladder runs Basic, Artist and Artist Pro, and it stops there. Their 16 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, do not mention a white-label or reseller portal, a sub-account or label portal, DDEX ERN ingest, an enterprise plan or a service level. SoundCloud is a very large company and an unpublished partner offer may well exist; what we can report is what their published pages cover.

Imprint is the LabelGrid white-label portal: your brand on your own domain, with every end customer in a workspace of their own rather than a row inside yours. Each workspace carries the same capability and its own logins, and an artist who wants their own label can sign themselves up on your domain. Imprint is scoped and quoted at onboarding rather than published, so on that product we are the ones doing the quoting.

Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks and 50 labels, and the ceiling is raised inside the deal. Past that, a custom agreement is the normal route for a business that fits no listed tier: too many tracks, too many labels, or too much monthly royalty income. Caps, platform fees and packaging are negotiable, and in special cases so is royalty retention. The published ladder is the floor of that conversation; the negotiated numbers stay private.

Our shape costs something too. A label customer does not inherit a tier of artists to supervise, so each label and each end customer is a unit you set up deliberately. That is more work than one artist account, and it is the reason we would not put one artist through it.

Engine is published like the rest of the price list. Starter API, Growth API and Scale API each carry a flat yearly fee, a track limit, a count of end-customer portals at 5, 25 and 100, with Custom API unlimited, and a ceiling on royalties processed each month of $35,000, $115,000 and $350,000 respectively. Sustained excess carries no overage charge; it starts a conversation about the next tier. Each standard API tier may add one pack of extra portals through support, fixed at 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth and 25 on Scale, and past one pack the answer is the next tier up.

The portal count and the label limit are two different meters. On the self-serve plans the number counts labels inside one account; on the API tiers it counts end-customer portals you run for other people. Documentation is readable without a login, the sandbox is enabled once an API plan is active rather than before you buy, and DDEX ERN import over SFTP or S3 runs on the API plans and on Custom Distribution with a one-time setup fee wherever it is switched on. Our MCP server ships on npm as @labelgrid/mcp under MIT and is listed on the public MCP registry, with @labelgrid/cli wrapping the same public API.

Three standard tiers

Starter, Growth and Scale API each carry a flat yearly fee, a track limit and a portal count.

End-customer portals

5 on Starter API, 25 on Growth API, 100 on Scale API and unlimited on Custom API.

Sandbox timing

The sandbox is enabled once an API plan is active, not as a pre-purchase demonstration.

Open-source tooling

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

Three places where SoundCloud for Artists is the better answer, taken from their own published pages. Two of them are money rows our self-serve ladder does not match.

Their pricing page gives Artist as “$3.25 / month, billed yearly for $39” with two tracks a month of distribution, and Artist Pro as “$8.25 / month, billed yearly for $99” with “Unlimited”. There is a Basic tier at no charge to sit on first, though distribution reads “Not available” on it. For one artist putting out a couple of tracks a year, that is cheaper and simpler than anything LabelGrid sells, and that artist is not who we build for.

Their distribution page states: “As of November 2025, we updated our monetization and distribution royalty share rate from 80% to 100%.” On both paid plans you keep 100% of your earnings, which beats the 85% on Solo, the 85% on Basic and the 90% on Pro. YouTube Content ID is marked available from the $3.25 Artist plan with its two tracks a month, inside plans that state 100%, while on LabelGrid you keep 80% of that revenue where our own deals earn it. There is no counterweight to add here.

Distribution sits inside a streaming service SoundCloud owns, which their distribution page calls “THE ONLY STREAMING PLATFORM WITH BUILT-IN DISTRIBUTION”. A release lands in front of people who already follow you there, and plays on SoundCloud pay through Fan-Powered Royalties, where a listener’s subscription or ad revenue goes to the artists they actually listened to. That covers plays on SoundCloud rather than on Spotify or Apple Music. Around it they sell Fan Support tips, an Artist Storefront, on-demand vinyl and monthly mastering credits. LabelGrid runs three products on one backend, and none of them is an audience.

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

Choose SoundCloud for Artists if you are one artist releasing your own music and you want the cheapest honest route to the stores. Their pricing page gives it as “$3.25 / month, billed yearly for $39” for two tracks a month, or “$8.25 / month, billed yearly for $99” for Artist Pro with “Unlimited”, and since November 2025 you keep 100% of your distribution and monetisation earnings on both. Choose them if YouTube Content ID inside the plan matters to you, because they include it from the $3.25 Artist plan with its two tracks a month, while on LabelGrid you keep 80% of that revenue where our own deals earn it, and our fee is 20%.

Choose them if the audience you care about is already on SoundCloud. Distribution sits inside a streaming service they own, so a release lands in front of the people who follow you there, and plays on SoundCloud pay through Fan-Powered Royalties. That applies to plays on SoundCloud, not to Spotify, Apple Music or any other platform, and LabelGrid has no version of it, because we run no streaming service.

Choose LabelGrid when the thing you are managing stops being your own releases and starts being a catalogue, a roster, or somebody else’s catalogue running under your name.

You run several labels

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

You have a back catalogue

Plans are sized by tracks rather than by a monthly release cadence, and Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks.

You resell distribution

Imprint puts your brand on your own domain, with every end customer in a workspace of their own.

You build on an API

Engine creates releases, delivers to stores and returns royalty and analytics data over documented endpoints.

Seven questions worth putting to any distribution platform, this one included. Every answer should be checkable on a public page before you pay for anything.

01Ask what the plan is metered by, whether that is a monthly release cadence, a track limit, a label count or royalties processed, and what happens at the moment you cross the meter.

02Ask whether every price and every plan limit can be read on the public site before anyone knows your name, and whether the top of the ladder is published or only quoted after a call.

03Ask who keeps what at each stage: the share on DSP royalties, the share on Content ID and user-generated content, and any charge applied at the moment a payout is issued.

04Ask whether a person checks a release for metadata and rights before it goes out, whether that check costs extra, and which plans it applies to.

05Ask which DDEX ERN versions the platform reads and writes, and on which plans catalogue import over SFTP or S3 is switched on, because a migration runs on exactly that.

06Ask whether a developer sandbox exists, at what point in the purchase it opens, and whether the API documentation can be read without a login or a sales conversation first.

07Ask whether the automation and AI tooling is open source and installable today or described on a page, then check the licence and the registry listing yourself rather than taking the answer.

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, the self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial, and the Engine documentation is readable without a login. If you are one artist putting out a couple of tracks a year, SoundCloud for Artists is the simpler purchase and this page has said so more than once. If you are running a catalogue, a roster or somebody else’s releases, read the price list first and then talk to us. Every SoundCloud for Artists value in the table above is taken from their own published pages, read 23 September 2026; if anything here has gone out of date or reads unfairly, tell us and we will correct it.