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.

Whose releases is the account for?

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

100%

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

Free-trial days on self-serve distribution plans

THEIR PAGES, OUR PAGES

The two products, row by row

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 cell says so rather than guessing.

Feature	LabelGrid	RouteNote
Entry price	No free tier: every distribution plan and API tier is priced on the website, and self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial	RouteNote Free: $0.00
What the paid tier costs	A published plan price, not a charge per release: Solo, Basic and Pro on self-serve, then Custom Distribution and the API tiers above them. Self-serve plans are sized by a track limit and a label limit; the API tiers are sized by tracks, a monthly royalty-processing cap and the number of registered labels	Premium, per release: $10 single, $20 EP, $30 album, $45 extended album
What the customer keeps	You keep 85% on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro, and from Custom Distribution up you keep 95% of standard-DSP royalties earned through LabelGrid's deals and 100% of what you earn on your own deals (SOBO, on Custom Distribution and the API tiers)	Premium: keep 100% of streaming and download revenue
Upload and artist limits	Metered, not unlimited: Solo and Basic step up a tier at their track and label limits; Pro adds a per-track overage at $0.15 per track per year and Custom Distribution $0.25 per track per year up to 10,000 tracks	Unlimited artists and unlimited uploads on both published plans
YouTube Content ID	Content ID registration on every distribution plan, with Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals split 80% to the artist and a 20% fee	No RouteNote charge for YouTube Content ID
Publishing administration	Not offered: LabelGrid does not administer publishing, and royalty accounting covers recording royalties only	RouteNote Publishing: 15% of monthly publishing royalties, no upfront cost
Advances	Not offered	RouteNote Advance: a flat fee up front, recouped from earnings
Splits with collaborators	Automated splits from Basic up and on every API tier; Solo carries neither splits nor per-artist statements	Revenue splits with collaborators
Release review	Manually reviewed for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, on every distribution plan and at no extra cost, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals	Releases are moderated before release; payment taken only on approval
Account structure	Imprint puts the customer's own brand on their own domain with every end customer in its own workspace; multi-label from Basic up; SOBO on Custom Distribution and the API tiers; Engine is the API	White-label portals, SOBO and sub-label hierarchy are not mentioned in their 20 distinct captured pages, read 2026-09-23
Spatial audio and hi-res	Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters are delivered on every distribution plan at no extra charge	Dolby Atmos and spatial audio are not mentioned in their 20 distinct captured pages, read 2026-09-23; Hi-Res Lossless is listed only on their quote-only All Access tier

Each sourced RouteNote value above comes from 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/. Where none of their primary pages addresses a dimension, the cell says so rather than guessing.

WHAT THE METER IS

What the price is charged on

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 RouteNote Free at 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 registered labels it carries. 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.

What you can check today

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

TOOLING

Your catalogue on your own site

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.

See the WordPress plugin

FOR LABELS AND ARTISTS

What is in the plan before you add anything

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 earned through LabelGrid's deals 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 distributes only through its own direct deals. Neither of those is a reason to switch in either direction.

Included, not added on

Content ID

Content ID registration runs on every distribution plan. You keep 80% of Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals; 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 standard-DSP deals.

Your own DSP deals (Custom Distribution and the API tiers)

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.

FOR WHITE-LABEL OPERATORS

Two account structures, and what each costs

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

One account, many artists

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.

A workspace for each customer

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.

When the ladder runs out

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.

FOR API BUILDERS

Reading the docs before buying the plan

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 registered labels: 5 on Starter, 25 on Growth, 100 on Scale, with Custom API unlimited. That ceiling is the same label meter a self-serve plan uses, set higher: every label on the account counts, your own included. 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 labels 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.

What the API plan gives you

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 in royalties a month; Custom API sets its own.

WHERE THEY WIN

Where RouteNote is the better choice

Three places where RouteNote is the better answer, taken from their own pages, and two of the three are product lines LabelGrid does not sell.

Keeping all of it on Premium

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.

Publishing administration

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.

Advances and an artist suite

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.

WHICH ONE

Choosing between the two

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 RouteNote Free at 85%, and nobody is charging you for a label you have not started.

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 on revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals. 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.

Choose LabelGrid if

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.

BEFORE YOU SIGN

Seven questions worth asking anyone

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.

RouteNote and LabelGrid: common questions

Who runs RouteNote, and who runs LabelGrid?

RouteNote Limited is registered in England and Wales under company number 07210563, with its registered office in Truro, Cornwall. It was founded in 2008 by Steven Finch and Rolf Munding, it is privately held and not listed on any stock exchange, and its agreements are governed by the law of England and Wales. LabelGrid has been going since 2017 and is based in Denver, Colorado, so RouteNote is the older of the two companies.

How much does RouteNote cost?

RouteNote Free costs $0.00 with no upfront cost. RouteNote Premium is priced per release by track count: $10 for a single, $20 for an EP of two to six tracks, $30 for an album of seven to eighteen, and $45 for an extended album of nineteen or more. Each Premium release then carries a renewal fee of $9.99 a year, which they describe as covering storage, admin and maintenance. LabelGrid has no free tier: our self-serve plans are yearly subscriptions starting at $99 a year for Solo.

How much of my revenue do I keep on each one?

On RouteNote Free you keep 85% of the net revenue RouteNote receives from the usage of your music, and their free plan card puts it as keeping 85% of your streaming and download revenue. On Premium you keep 100% of your streaming and download revenue. At LabelGrid you keep 85% on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro, and from Custom Distribution up you keep 95% of royalties earned through our own standard-DSP deals and 100% of what you earn on your own deals, which is available on Custom Distribution and the API tiers. For a small catalogue their Premium plan returns more.

What is RouteNote All Access?

All Access is RouteNote's third pricing option, custom-priced and sold by enquiry. Their card lists unlimited Premium releases, Fast Track moderation, tailored pricing, dedicated account management, priority support, pitching and playlisting assistance, Hi-Res Lossless uploads and early access to new features. Our own top of the ladder is quote-only too.

Does RouteNote charge for YouTube Content ID?

No. Their pricing FAQ states that they do not charge for YouTube's Content ID. Music containing non-exclusive loops or samples, or already present on Content ID in another release, is not eligible, and your own YouTube channel may qualify for their Content ID Allow List so that it does not receive claims. LabelGrid offers Content ID registration on all distribution plans and takes a 20% fee on Content ID and UGC revenue earned through its own deals, with the same class of eligibility restriction. On this dimension they are the cheaper of the two.

Does RouteNote administer publishing, and does LabelGrid?

RouteNote Publishing has no upfront cost and takes 15% of monthly publishing royalties. Your PRO pays you the writer's share, half of your performance royalties, directly; RouteNote Publishing collects the publisher's half plus 100% of your mechanicals and registers works at multiple PROs. You do not have to distribute through RouteNote to use it. Payment lands 45 days after the month royalties were earned in, though they are clear that society ingestion runs six to nine months. LabelGrid does not administer publishing, and our royalty accounting covers recording royalties only.

Does RouteNote offer advances?

Yes. RouteNote Advance pays an agreed flat fee up front and takes return payments automatically from your earnings until the advance is repaid, after which normal monthly payments resume and you can apply again. Two qualifiers travel with it: the account must be at least six months old, and they describe the service as available to a number of clients at the moment. LabelGrid does not offer advances of any kind.

When does RouteNote pay out?

Their payment cycle starts on the 15th of each month and is usually complete by the 20th. If money has not arrived, their own troubleshooting guidance asks you to check that your PayPal is set up to receive USD, which they note is not standard on every PayPal account depending on the territory you are based in. The articles describing their full set of payment options were not part of what we read, so this page says nothing about which other payout methods they offer.

What happens after I submit a release to RouteNote?

It goes through moderation. Payment for a Premium release is taken only on approval, and a release that is not approved has its transaction cancelled with no funds taken. Fast Track moderation is listed on the Premium and All Access cards. You choose between Stripe, PayPal or pay later on the release page, and once the release is approved you have 30 days to request a refund. LabelGrid reviews every release for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, on every distribution plan and at no extra cost, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Is RouteNote a fit for a label, a distributor or a platform?

Their 20 distinct captured pages, read 2026-09-23, do not mention white-label portals, SOBO or sub-label hierarchy; SOBO runs on Custom Distribution and the API tiers on our side. Those pages carry no store count either, and describe reach in words, naming Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL and JioSaavn alongside YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and SoundCloud. That is what their published material covers, which is a different question from what the company can do. LabelGrid is built for the case where the catalogue belongs to other people.

See what it costs before you talk to us

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, the API documentation is public, and Imprint is by waiting list, 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.

See API Pricing