Stem Alternative: Infrastructure, Not Label Services

Short answer: Stem sells a label’s services for a Distribution Fee of ten percent of Gross Revenue, and that fee buys rollout strategy and artist development, access to advertising agencies and brand partnerships, playlist pitching guidance, an account manager and an advance facility. LabelGrid sells none of those. We sell the infrastructure underneath a label or a distributor: distribution, royalty accounting, a workspace per customer, an API. Every Stem value in the table below comes from their own published pages, linked beneath it.

What happens to your catalogue if you leave?

The licence Stem takes is exclusive: you grant them the right to “Exclusively make copies of, distribute, sell, host, transmit, make available and otherwise distribute all or any part of the Content”, including the monetisation of user-generated content, and it runs five years per release with automatic twelve-month renewals. Notice does not end it while you are unrecouped: “if, as of the last day of any Contract Period in which your notice of termination is given, your account hereunder is in an unrecouped position, the License Period will continue until the last day of the calendar month in which your account is fully recouped”. The licence you grant LabelGrid is global and non-exclusive, no exclusivity survives termination, and a standard plan ends when you say so in writing; fees paid for the term are not refunded, and a subscription lapsed beyond 60 days may see the content withdrawn, which is the blunter policy of the two.

3

Products on one backend

4

DDEX ERN versions

0

LabelGrid fee to issue a payout

2017

Founded

THEIR TERMS, OUR TERMS

Row by row, from published documents

Each Stem value below comes from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read it: the Terms of Service, the Scale page, the application forms, the homepage and the privacy policy. Anything their pages do not state is left out.

Feature LabelGrid Stem
Getting in Self-serve signup on the standard plans; API and white-label go through onboarding screening Application-gated; each application individually reviewed
What you keep 85% on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro; 95% on our DSP deals and 100% on your own for Custom Distribution and the API tiers 90% of Gross Revenue, after the 10% Distribution Fee
Costs on top of the share No recoupable costs; LabelGrid does not fund marketing Design, artwork, advertising, marketing and promotion costs are recoupable from the customer's share
Cross-collateralisation No cross-collateralisation in the Terms Fully cross-collateralised across the customer's whole Stem catalogue
Exclusivity Non-exclusive licence; you may distribute the same content elsewhere Exclusive digital distribution licence, including UGC monetisation
Term Standard plans are yearly and end at any time in writing 5-year initial term per release, auto-renewing in 12-month periods, 60 days’ notice to exit
Leaving Content may be withdrawn after 60 days lapsed; nothing gates your exit on a balance Exit takes effect only once the account is fully recouped; Content is then taken down
Advances Not offered Scale advances: fixed fee, no interest, repaid as a % of future monthly earnings
Services Infrastructure, not services: no marketing, playlist pitching or artist development Rollout strategy and artist development, advertising-agency and brand-partnership network, playlist-pitching guidance, business-intelligence team
Royalty accounting Statements, payouts and automated splits from Basic up and on every API tier Monthly statements by email, within 60 days of month end
Payout threshold A minimum payout threshold may apply, shown in the dashboard US$100 minimum balance per payee
For labels and operators Imprint (the white-label portal) and Engine (the API) Royalty Services, now served from tone.is (Tone)
Legal entity Label Grid LLC, Denver, Colorado Stem Disintermedia, Inc.

Each of the 13 Stem values above comes from one of their own published pages, read 2026-09-18: apply.stem.is/apply-now/, apply.stem.is/scale/, apply.stem.is/terms-of-service/, stem.is/, tone.is/. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

WHAT THE FEE COVERS

What the ten percent is a share of

A percentage on its own is not a price. The rest of it is the base the percentage is applied to, and Stem’s Terms define theirs: Gross Revenue is computed “on a fully cross-collateralized basis across all Content uploaded by you through the Stem Service”. One account, one pot. A record that does well pays down what is outstanding against the rest of your catalogue before the balance reaches you.

Promotion sits on top of that share rather than inside it. “Recoupable Expenses” cover non-overhead, unreimbursed third party costs Stem pays that are attributable to the rights granted, “including, without limitations, costs related to design, artwork, advertising, marketing, promotion”, and they are “recoupable from your share of Net Revenue”.

LabelGrid funds nothing, so our Terms carry no recoupment concept and no cross-collateralisation. The rate for your plan is published on the pricing page and applies to what your own releases earn. That is a narrower promise than theirs, and it is the whole of it.

How our rate is set

Published per plan

Solo, Basic and Pro retain 85%, 85% and 90% of DSP royalties, with the rate on the pricing page.

No pooled account

Your plan rate applies to what your releases earn; earnings are not pooled across the catalogue to cover costs.

Nothing to recoup

We fund no marketing, artwork or advertising, so no such cost is charged back against your share.

Flat fees higher up

Custom Distribution and every API tier are flat yearly fees, retaining 95% on our DSP deals and 100% on yours.

SAME PUBLIC API

Your catalogue on your own site

The LabelGrid WordPress plugin syncs your releases to your own website, while @labelgrid/mcp and @labelgrid/cli run on the same public API. Publish a discography, script a bulk update, or point your own AI client at your catalogue.

FOR LABELS AND ARTISTS

What a distribution plan covers here

LabelGrid plans are annual and sized by a track limit and a label limit. Inside one: Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters at no extra charge, YouTube Content ID on every distribution plan with a 20% fee on UGC and Content ID revenue, and automated royalty splits from Basic up and on every API tier, not on Solo or GATE. Every release is checked by a person for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, on every distribution plan and at no extra cost, unless the account has been cleared. Distribution plans open with a seven-day free trial.

For this reader the real difference is not the feature list. Stem’s published material describes a team you get access to: rollout strategy and artist development, a network of digital advertising agencies and brand partnerships, and a business intelligence team flagging key indicators in your data. An annual plan buys none of that. If your year is two records and a rollout you would rather not plan alone, that is a reasonable thing to buy, and we are not selling it.

Inside a distribution plan

Release review

A person checks quality, metadata and rights before delivery on every distribution plan, unless the account has been cleared.

Royalty splits

Automated from Basic up and on every API tier; Solo and GATE do not carry them.

Atmos and hi-res

Dolby Atmos mixes and high-resolution masters go out on every distribution plan at no extra charge.

Payouts

We charge nothing of our own to issue one, though a dashboard-shown threshold may apply.

FOR WHITE-LABEL OPERATORS

Shareholders on one account, or a portal each

Stem’s structure is built around the Claiming Party: you list each shareholder and its Identified Share of Net Revenue, and each is accounted to separately. The LabelGrid shape is flat, with every end customer a full workspace of its own.

Each shareholder, paid directly

On Stem the customer names each “Claiming Party” and its “Identified Share” of Net Revenue. Their homepage says every shareholder gets an individual dashboard showing what they are paid and when, with monthly payment. One condition comes with it: Stem “will not process payments for any Content unless and until such time as all designated Claiming Parties for such Content have subscribed to the Stem Service and have confirmed their respective shares of Net Revenue”.

A portal for each customer

Each LabelGrid end customer is one label with its own login, catalogue, analytics and earnings, partitioned from every other, while you as the operator see across all of them. That shape has a cost: a label customer does not get a tier of artists beneath it to supervise, because an artist who wants their own label signs up as their own end customer on your domain. Imprint is that portal under your brand, scoped at onboarding.

When the ladder does not fit

The published plans are sized by a track limit and a label limit. Pro carries a per-track overage of $0.15 a year, Custom Distribution $0.25 per track per year up to 10,000 tracks, and each standard API tier adds one label pack through support — 5 portals on Starter, 10 on Growth, 25 on Scale. A business outside those ceilings gets a custom deal: caps, platform fees, bulk label pricing, and in some cases royalty retention, with the figures agreed under NDA.

The ladder on the pricing page is the floor of that conversation rather than its ceiling. Stem also markets Royalty Services to rights owners, a product that now runs as tone.is under Tone Pay, Inc.; the questions below cover how it is priced.

FOR API BUILDERS

Read the docs before you buy the plan

The Engine documentation is public: no login, no qualification form, and no call before you can see what the endpoints do. Three standard tiers are published as flat yearly fees, Custom API starts from a published figure plus $0.025 per track per month, and a sandbox is issued once the plan is active rather than ahead of purchase. Delivery covers DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2.

The meters are where the bill moves, so here they are. Each standard tier carries a track limit, a label limit and a monthly royalty processing cap of $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000. Crossing a track or label limit moves you up the published ladder; sustained excess on the royalty cap starts a tier-upgrade conversation rather than an overage charge, and each meter is negotiable in a custom deal. Above the API, @labelgrid/mcp is listed on the public MCP registry, and it and @labelgrid/cli are MIT licensed.

What an API plan meters

Tracks and labels

Each standard tier carries a track limit and a label limit, and adds one pack of portals: 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth, 25 on Scale.

Royalty processing

Standard tiers cap royalties processed monthly at $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000; sustained excess moves you up a tier.

Sandbox

Comes with every API plan once the plan is active, after onboarding screening and KYC/KYB.

Open-source tooling

@labelgrid/mcp and @labelgrid/cli are MIT licensed, readable before either one touches your catalogue.

WHERE STEM WINS

Three reasons to choose Stem instead

Three places where Stem is the stronger answer, taken from their own pages.

A team on your rollout

Stem’s homepage describes access to a team of experts for rollout strategy and artist development, and through them a network of digital advertising agencies and brand partnerships. Their business intelligence team flags key indicators and digs into platform-specific insights, and their Scale FAQ points a customer to “your account manager”. LabelGrid provides none of that. If the gap in your operation is people rather than software, they are selling people.

Cash up front through Scale

Scale pays an advance against future earnings, and their page is precise about what it is: “No, this is not a loan.” There is no interest and no credit check. A fixed fee is calculated up front from your average monthly digital streaming earnings, the size of the advance and how quickly you repay, then a locked percentage of each month’s earnings is deducted until it clears. LabelGrid does not offer advances.

Playlist pitching and campaign spend

Under “Playlist Promotion” their homepage offers personalised guidance on your music pitching strategy, and their Terms let Stem pay third party costs for design, artwork, advertising, marketing and promotion, recouped from your share afterwards. That is a budget and somebody to spend it with. LabelGrid runs no pitching desk and funds no campaigns, so a release leaves us with the marketing you brought to it.

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

WHICH ONE

Choose Stem if, choose LabelGrid if

Choose Stem if you want a label’s services without signing to a label. Their homepage sets out what the team does: rollout strategy and artist development, a network of digital advertising agencies and brand partnerships, personalised guidance on your pitching strategy, and a business intelligence team digging into platform-specific insights. That work has to be paid for, and a share of revenue is a coherent way to pay for it.

Choose them if you want an advance. Scale pays cash up front against a locked percentage of future monthly earnings, with the fee calculated before you accept and no credit checks, for creators in the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Choose them, too, if an exclusive licence with a five-year initial period per release is a trade you are content to make in exchange for people working your record.

Choose LabelGrid if

You distribute for others

Each of your customers gets a workspace of its own, with its own login, catalogue, analytics and statements.

You want it non-exclusive

Ours is a global, non-exclusive licence, and no exclusivity survives termination of the agreement.

You build on an API

Public docs, three published tiers, four DDEX ERN versions, and a sandbox once the plan is active.

You outgrew the ladder

Custom deals cover caps, platform fees and bulk label pricing; the route is public, the figures are not.

BEFORE YOU CHOOSE ANYONE

Seven questions worth asking whoever you pick

Put these to us as readily as to anyone else.

01Ask what moves your bill: whether the fee is a percentage or a flat price, what base a percentage applies to, and whether earnings across your releases are pooled.

02Ask which costs can be charged back against your share, who authorises them, and whether spend on your behalf is recouped from later earnings.

03Ask whether you can read the price for a business your size without booking a call, and at which rung the published number stops and a quotation begins.

04Ask whether a person reviews each release for quality, metadata and rights before delivery, whether that is included on every plan, and how long the queue runs at its worst.

05Ask what happens to your catalogue when the arrangement ends: whether the licence is exclusive, how long the term runs, what notice is needed, and whether a balance extends it.

06Ask which DDEX ERN versions they deliver and to which platforms, and whether they can ingest DDEX from you as well as send it out.

07Ask when a sandbox arrives, before or after you pay, and whether the tooling you would connect to your catalogue is open source enough to read beforehand.

Frequently asked questions

The contracting entity is Stem Disintermedia, Inc., which the Terms describe as operating “together with its affiliates”. The privacy policy linked from every footer is headed “Concord – Privacy Policy” and names Concord Music Group, Inc. as the data controller. Los Angeles is the arbitration venue in the Terms; the postal addresses on the pages we captured are Concord’s, in Nashville and London. Access is by application, reviewed one at a time: “We personally and carefully consider each application.” LabelGrid is Label Grid LLC, founded in 2017, based in Denver, Colorado, and a Merlin member. Standard plans are self-serve with a seven-day trial; API and white-label accounts go through onboarding screening.

The two are not the same purchase, so start with what each price is for. Stem’s Terms define a “Distribution Fee” as “ten percent (10%) of Gross Revenue derived from the exploitation of all such Content, unless Stem otherwise agrees to a different percentage in writing”, and “Net Revenue” as “Gross Revenue less the Distribution Fee and less all Deductions”, with Deductions limited to taxes, costs of collection, refunds and credits. Against that base Stem “will pay you in the aggregate a sum equal to One Hundred Percent (100%) of Net Revenue”. No subscription price or rate card appeared on the 22 Stem pages we captured on 18 September 2026. That fee is buying a services team as well as distribution. LabelGrid publishes a rate for every plan and API tier and sells the infrastructure without the services, so what settles it is what each side is paid to do.

Their Terms name three. Gross Revenue is computed “on a fully cross-collateralized basis across all Content uploaded by you through the Stem Service”, so the catalogue settles as one balance. “Recoupable Expenses” cover third party costs Stem pays that are attributable to the rights granted, “including, without limitations, costs related to design, artwork, advertising, marketing, promotion”, recoupable “from your share of Net Revenue”. And Stem “may earn and retain interest on any amounts that are or may become due to you” but are not yet payable, for its own account. LabelGrid funds no marketing, artwork or advertising, so our Terms carry no recoupment concept and no cross-collateralisation; the deductions on your money are the plan’s distribution share, a higher share on UGC and Content ID revenue, and your own bank-side charges.

Most of the ones a label would recognise. Their homepage describes a team of experts to “assist with rollout strategy and artist development” who “help you tap into our vast network of digital advertising agencies, brand partnerships, and more”, personalised guidance on your pitching strategy under Playlist Promotion, and revenue data per platform, flagged by a business intelligence team. Their Scale FAQ tells a customer to “talk to your account manager”. LabelGrid provides none of those. Support here is ticket or email on every plan, priority on the higher standard plans, and a dedicated account manager on Scale API and Custom API: account management for the platform, not a marketing team.

Stem does, through Scale; LabelGrid does not, on any plan or tier. Their page describes cash up front, repaid as a locked percentage of future monthly earnings: “No, this is not a loan.” There is no interest and no credit check, and a fixed fee is calculated before you take it, based on “your average monthly digital streaming earnings, the size of the advance requested, and how quickly you want to pay the advance back”. Every recipient connects a bank account, and splits are locked once an advance is initiated. Two conditions repay a careful read: “A Scale advance is only available to creators (independent artists and labels, songwriters, producers) in the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom”; and “If you are not already earning digital sound recording royalties through Stem, you must agree to transfer your catalog to Stem before an advance can be issued.”

The License Period for each release starts when Stem begins exploiting it and runs five years, then renews automatically for successive twelve-month periods unless the customer gives written notice at least sixty days before the end of the current one. On expiry or termination Stem directs the platforms to remove the Content, with a condition: “if, as of the last day of any Contract Period in which your notice of termination is given, your account hereunder is in an unrecouped position, the License Period will continue until the last day of the calendar month in which your account is fully recouped”. The licence is exclusive and covers monetisation of user-generated content, while the customer “retains all ownership rights in the Content”. Stem may also end it “at any time without cause upon ten (10) days written notice”, and the parity belongs in the same breath: LabelGrid may terminate a membership or subscription for any reason by notice to your registered email, at least as broad a right. Ours is non-exclusive, and a standard plan ends whenever you tell us in writing.

Stem accounts monthly: statements are “rendered via email to an address designated by you within sixty (60) days of the end of each calendar month”, each Claiming Party accounted to separately, and their homepage says every shareholder gets an individual dashboard showing what they are paid and when. Payment waits on the roster being complete: Stem “will not process payments for any Content” until every designated Claiming Party has subscribed and confirmed its share. Two money-path points carry parity. Stem pays once an earned balance reaches “at least One Hundred U.S. Dollars (US$100)”, and LabelGrid may require a threshold of its own, shown in your dashboard, carrying smaller balances into a later cycle; their payees are “responsible for any bank fees or other charges related to any such payments”, and we pass bank-side and intermediary charges through too, though LabelGrid adds no payout or withdrawal fee of its own. Statements, payouts and automated splits run from Basic up and on every API tier.

Stem markets Royalty Services to rights owners through its own application form, and on 18 September 2026 the apply.stem.is/royalty-services/ link redirected to tone.is, a separate product branded Tone whose footer renders “© 2026 Tone Pay, Inc.” and which calls itself “The full-stack solution for music rights owners”. Tone sells that platform on a subscription set by an Order Form, where “Subscription Fees are generally based on factors such as the number of contracts created in the Service, the number of Payees invited by the Client, the number of sales sources”. The call to action is “Book a demo”, and no price appeared on the 12 tone.is pages we captured that day. LabelGrid’s two offers for this buyer are Imprint, the white-label portal on your brand and domain, scoped at onboarding, and Engine, the API, with published flat yearly fees on its three standard tiers.

Three things a reader of the Terms should know. Publishing is an opt-in checkbox letting Stem collect performance, mechanical, sync and similar monies for the Composition, and the same clause states the current limit: “Currently Stem only accounts for royalties in connection with downloads on iTunes. In the event other music publishing monies are included in Gross Revenue, such amounts will not be accounted to you separately.” On platform settings, the customer agrees that on request “you will permit Stem to access Artist’s ‘Spotify for Artists’ (or similar) feature on such Artist’s Spotify account enabling Stem to monitor and toggle ‘Discovery’ (or similar) mode thereon”. And the agreement is modular, incorporating “any applicable Cash Advance Addendum” and “any Physical Distribution Addendum”. LabelGrid does not administer publishing.

There is a route, and its existence is public even though the numbers are not. Custom deals are for a business that has outgrown the ceilings of the published plans on tracks, on labels, or on monthly royalty income. Negotiable: caps and ceilings, platform fees, bespoke packaging such as bulk label pricing for an operation running thousands of single-label artists, custom terms, and in special cases royalty retention. Custom Distribution covers up to 2,000 tracks and the cap is raised inside the deal. The figures are agreed under NDA.

See the price before you talk to us

Every distribution plan and every API tier is priced on the pricing page, and the Engine documentation is public; Imprint is scoped at onboarding. Each Stem value in the table above comes from one of the pages linked beneath it, read on 18 September 2026. If any of it is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.