RouteNote Alternative: Infrastructure, Not a Consumer Plan

Short answer: RouteNote sells distribution to artists releasing their own music, through a free plan that costs $0.00 and a Premium plan bought one release at a time from $10 for a single. LabelGrid sells the layer a label or a platform runs other people’s releases on: a workspace for every customer, royalty accounting, a documented API and a portal under your own brand. We have no free tier, and for one artist with a few releases RouteNote is cheaper. Every RouteNote value below comes from their own published pages.

RouteNote’s published material describes one account into which an artist or a label uploads unlimited artists and unlimited releases, and their 20 distinct captured pages, read 2026-09-23, do not mention white-label portals, SOBO or sub-label hierarchy, where LabelGrid’s product is the other thing: Imprint puts your own brand on your own domain with every end customer in a workspace of its own, Engine is the API, and distributing under your own DSP deals sits on Custom Distribution and the API tiers. If you are releasing your own music, one account holding all of your artists is the right shape, and if other people’s releases pass through your business under your name, a single account is the wrong shape whatever it costs.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

Retained on your own DSP deals, Custom and API tiers

Free-trial days on self-serve distribution plans

Each RouteNote value below is taken 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, the row is left out rather than guessed at.

Each of the 11 RouteNote values above comes from one of their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: routenote.com/pricing, routenote.com/s/free-music-distribution, support.routenote.com/kb-article/how-can-i-pay-for-my-premium-release/, support.routenote.com/kb-article/how-much-does-routenote-cost/, support.routenote.com/kb-article/what-is-routenote-advance/, support.routenote.com/kb-article/what-is-routenote-publishing/. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

At RouteNote the meter is the release. Premium is priced by track count at $10 for a single, $20 for an EP, $30 for an album and $45 for an extended album, and each Premium release carries a published renewal of $9.99 every year for storage, admin and maintenance. The alternative to paying per release is their free plan, where you keep 85% of the net revenue RouteNote receives. Release three singles and that arithmetic is hard to argue with.

At LabelGrid the meter is the catalogue and the account. A self-serve plan is sized by a track limit and a label limit; an API tier is sized by tracks, a monthly royalty-processing cap and the number of end-customer portals it serves. Overages are charged per unit rather than as a percentage: $0.15 per track per year on Pro, $0.25 per track per year on Custom Distribution up to 10,000 tracks. A catalogue that earns more next year does not cost more next year.

One limit, stated plainly. RouteNote’s published Terms say they govern use of the website and do not affect any other agreement, and the separate Artist/Label Agreement has to be accepted before a release is submitted. We could not read that document, so this page makes no claim about what either company’s distribution contract says.

Plan limits, published

Solo carries 100 tracks and one label, Basic 200 tracks and three labels, Pro 500 and five, and Custom Distribution 2,000 and fifty.

Public API docs

The REST documentation is readable without a login, and a sandbox opens once the API plan is active.

Open-source tooling

Our MCP server is MIT-licensed on npm as @labelgrid/mcp, with a companion CLI on the same public API.

Quoted separately

Imprint is scoped at onboarding. Custom API publishes a starting price, and the rest is agreed in the deal.

The WordPress plugin publishes your catalogue straight onto your own site, and it runs on any LabelGrid account at no additional cost. The MCP server connects Claude, Cursor or any MCP client to your account and the CLI wraps the same public API; those two need an API plan and a token.

Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters are delivered on every LabelGrid distribution plan at no extra charge. On RouteNote’s pricing page the phrase Hi-Res Lossless uploads appears once, in the feature run of the quote-only All Access tier, and their 20 distinct captured pages, read 2026-09-23, do not mention Dolby Atmos or spatial audio. If immersive masters are part of how your records are made, that is a real difference in what the plan covers by default.

Two things in that plan are better on their side and we would rather say so here than bury it. RouteNote charges nothing for YouTube Content ID; on LabelGrid, Content ID registration runs on every distribution plan and you keep 80% of Content ID and UGC revenue while we take a 20% fee. They also allow unlimited artists and unlimited uploads on both published plans, where our self-serve plans are metered by tracks and labels.

Two rows in the table above sit on both sides of it, and we would rather name them than let a comparison table imply otherwise. RouteNote advertises revenue splits with collaborators, and their releases are moderated before release, with payment for a Premium release taken only on approval. LabelGrid runs automated splits from Basic up and on every API tier, and reviews releases for quality, metadata and rights before delivery on every plan at no extra cost, unless the account has been cleared. Neither of those is a reason to switch in either direction.

Content ID

Content ID registration runs on every distribution plan. You keep 80% of Content ID and UGC revenue; we take a 20% fee.

What you keep

You keep 85% on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro, and 95% from Custom Distribution up on LabelGrid’s own DSP deals.

Your own DSP deals

Distribute under your own DSP deals on Custom Distribution and the API tiers, and you keep 100% of what those earn.

ISRC and UPC

Assigned automatically when you create a release, at no extra cost, and yours to keep.

Neither shape is simply better than the other. Here is what each one is good at.

RouteNote’s own copy for labels and collectives is that there are no limits to the number of artists or releases you can upload. Both published plans list unlimited artists and unlimited uploads, and the 20 distinct pages we captured on 2026-09-23 describe that single-account model rather than portals or sub-labels. For a collective whose releases are all its own, that is less administration, not more.

Imprint gives each end customer a workspace of its own, under your brand and on your domain, composed by you rather than inherited down a tree. One label, one portal login, one set of statements, with self-serve signup available on your domain. An artist who wants their own label becomes their own end customer; an artist who does not is a contributor credit inside someone else’s workspace, and that is the cost of our model.

Custom Distribution starts at 2,000 tracks and the cap is raised in the deal. Beyond the published ladder, custom deals cover caps, ceilings, platform fees and packaging, including bulk label pricing for an operation running thousands of single-label artists. Those numbers are agreed under NDA rather than published, which is the same position RouteNote takes on All Access and one we are not going to pretend is unusual.

Neither structure is the better product. The question is whose name the releases go out under, and that is worth settling before anyone talks about price.

Engine is the LabelGrid distribution API, and the documentation sits in front of the paywall: you can read the endpoints and the delivery model without a login or a sales call. A sandbox opens once the API plan is active, which is a genuine limit and we would rather you heard it from us than found it at signup. On the DDEX side we support ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, and DDEX import over SFTP or S3 is an option on the API tiers and on Custom Distribution.

The meters are worth reading before you commit. Each of the three standard API tiers carries a track limit, a monthly royalty-processing cap of 35,000, 115,000 or 350,000, and a ceiling on end-customer portals: 5 on Starter, 25 on Growth, 100 on Scale, with Custom API unlimited. That portal ceiling is a different meter from the label limit on a self-serve plan. Sustained excess over the royalty cap starts a tier conversation rather than an overage invoice, and Custom API sets its own cap and charges $0.025 per track per month above it. Each standard tier can add one pack of extra portals through support, sized by the tier at 5 more on Starter, 10 on Growth and 25 on Scale; past that single pack the answer is the next tier up.

Around the API sit the pieces you can inspect today: an MIT-licensed MCP server on the public registry with 30 tools across eight toolsets, a CLI, and a WordPress plugin that all speak the same public API.

Docs without a login

The REST documentation is public, so the integration can be scoped before any money changes hands.

DDEX ERN

We support ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, with DDEX import an option on the API tiers and Custom Distribution.

Sandbox on activation

The sandbox opens once the API plan is active.

Royalty processing cap

Standard tiers process 35,000, 115,000 or 350,000 royalty lines a month; Custom API sets its own.

Three places where RouteNote is the better answer, taken from their own pages, and two of the three are product lines we do not have at all.

On RouteNote Premium you keep 100% of your streaming and download revenue, and Premium starts at $10 for a single. On the free plan you keep 85% of the net revenue RouteNote receives, and both published plans carry unlimited artists and unlimited uploads. You also have 30 days to ask for a refund once a Premium release is approved. For one artist with a handful of releases, that returns more money than any LabelGrid plan does.

RouteNote Publishing has no upfront cost and takes 15% of monthly publishing royalties, collecting the publisher’s half of performance royalties plus 100% of mechanicals, and registering works at multiple PROs. You do not have to distribute through RouteNote to use it. LabelGrid does not administer publishing at all, and our royalty accounting covers recording royalties only. If you want both halves handled in one place, they do it and we do not.

RouteNote Advance pays an agreed flat fee up front and recoups it automatically from your earnings, for accounts at least six months old and, as they put it, for a number of clients at the moment. We offer no advances. They also sell an artist suite around it: PUSH.fm marketing tools, RouteNote Create samples, and a royalty-free library for video creators. They were founded in 2008; we have been going since 2017.

We keep this section in every comparison we publish, because a comparison that only flatters the company paying for it is worth nothing to the person reading it.

Choose RouteNote if you are releasing your own music and the catalogue is still small enough to count. A single costs $10 on Premium and you keep 100% of your streaming and download revenue, or it costs nothing at all on the free plan at 85%, and nobody is charging you for a label you do not have.

Choose them if you want publishing administration in the same account at 15% of monthly publishing royalties, or an advance against your earnings, or YouTube Content ID at no charge where we take a 20% fee. Choose them if their marketing tools and their sample library are what you are shopping for.

Choose LabelGrid when the releases stop being only yours. The moment other people’s catalogues arrive under your name, you need statements per artist, splits that calculate themselves, and a portal your customers log into. That is a different purchase, priced differently, and it is worth very little to a solo artist with four singles.

You run labels

Multi-label catalogues run from Basic up: three labels on Basic, five on Pro and fifty on Custom Distribution, each with its own settings and statements.

You resell distribution

Imprint puts your brand on your domain and gives every end customer a workspace of its own.

You are integrating

Engine, an MCP server and a CLI all run on one public API, with DDEX import available on the API tiers and Custom Distribution.

You want a per-unit bill

Overages are charged per track, $0.15 a year on Pro and $0.25 on Custom Distribution, rather than as a share of what the catalogue earns.

Ask these of us as readily as of anyone else. The answers tell you more about a distributor than the headline number does.

01Ask what the price is metered on, whether that is a release, a track, a label, an account or a share of the royalty, and what the bill does when the catalogue doubles.

02Ask whether you can read the full price of the plan you would actually buy, overages included, without a call or a form, and then check the page itself rather than the sales deck.

03Ask whether a person checks the release before it is delivered, whether that check runs on every plan, and whether it costs anything extra when it does.

04Ask what arrives in the plan without an upgrade: Content ID registration, automated splits, and per-artist statements for everyone you pay.

05Ask which DDEX ERN versions they ingest and deliver, and which version each store receives, because that answer decides how much mapping work your own side has to absorb.

06Ask whether there is a sandbox, when you get access to it, and whether the documentation can be read before you buy.

07Ask whether the tooling around the API is open source and auditable, or whether the only way to see how your data moves is to run it in production and watch.

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, the API documentation is public, and Imprint is scoped at onboarding. Each RouteNote value in the table above comes from one of the pages linked beneath it, read on 2026-09-23. If any of it is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.