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TuneCore Alternative: Label Infrastructure, Not a Subscription

Short answer: if you release your own music and nothing else, TuneCore is cheaper and simpler, and we will not pretend otherwise. LabelGrid is built for the layer above that: several labels in one account, each with its own catalogue and per-artist statements, splits that run without anyone doing arithmetic, a documented REST API with a sandbox, and a portal that distributes under your own brand. Every plan and API tier is priced on the website, and you keep 85% on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro, and 95% on our standard-DSP deals with 100% on your own from Custom Distribution up. Every TuneCore value below comes from one of their own pages.

What does the subscription actually cover?

The annual plan is not the whole price, and the rest of it is published on other pages. TuneCore Accelerator ships with the plans and is monetised on its own: "Accelerator applies a 20% commission ONLY on radio and autoplay streams generated directly through Spotify Discovery Mode", with artists keeping "100% of net revenue from all other Spotify streams". Publishing is a separate product at a "$75 one-time fee", and its sync option is "entirely optional" but, once taken, leaves those songs "exclusively eligible to be pitched and licensed by our sync team at a commission of 50%". Two further meters are ours as much as theirs, so they are not a point in our favour: the 20% their plan table applies to money earned from TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube is the same 20% we take on the Content ID and UGC revenue our own deals earn, and Spotify's "monthly €10 penalty" for tracks flagged as artificial streaming is passed to the account holder on both platforms. What is left is legibility rather than cost. The figure on the pricing page is $24.99 a year; the Discovery Mode commission is on a second page and the publishing fees on two more.

3

Products on one backend

4

DDEX ERN versions

0

LabelGrid fee to issue a payout

2017

Founded

THEIR PAGES, OUR PAGES

Row by row, from published pages

Each TuneCore value below is taken from one of their own published pages, linked beneath the table with the date we read it. A dimension their pages do not state is left out rather than guessed at.
FeatureLabelGridTuneCore
PlansEvery plan and API tier published, from the single-label plans up to Custom Distribution and the API tiersThree unlimited plans from $24.99/year
What you keep on distribution85% on Solo and Basic, 90% on Pro; 95% on our standard-DSP deals and 100% on your own for Custom Distribution and the API tiersFlat annual fee, no commission on distribution revenue (see the UGC and Discovery Mode fees)
Social and UGC revenueThe same 20% on Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals20% fee on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube earnings
SyncNo sync agency; we neither pitch nor take a share, and nothing is exclusive to usSync: 50% commission, opt-in, exclusive while opted in
PublishingNot offered: LabelGrid does not administer publishingPublishing administration: $75 one-time fee
AdvancesNot offeredTuneCore Direct Advance, powered by RoyFi: funding now for a share of future royalties
DSP fraud penaltiesA DSP penalty imposed on LabelGrid may be passed through under our Terms, the same upstream chargeSpotify's EUR 10 per-track monthly penalty passed through to the account holder
Who you contract withLabel Grid LLC, Denver, Colorado, for every customer wherever they areNon-US customers contract with Believe International, part of the same group as TuneCore, Inc.
What the company sellsDistribution, accounting and API infrastructure; no artist-services catalogue sold alongside itA paid artist-services catalogue: mastering, licensing, promotion, merch, video, pitching
Account structureMulti-label from Basic up, each label holding its own catalogue, statements and royalty rules: 3 on Basic, 5 on Pro, 50 on Custom Distribution, and 5, 25 or 100 on the API tiers with Custom API unlimitedMultiple artist profiles and a custom label name on the Professional plan
Splits and statementsAutomated splits from Basic up and on every API tier, with per-artist statements and payouts in the platformCollaborator splits included on every plan, no commission

Each of the 11 TuneCore values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-21: support.tunecore.com/hc/en-us/articles/22901710894356-Fees-Penalties-for-Artificial-Streaming, support.tunecore.com/hc/en-us/articles/24259395342996-Updates-to-TuneCore-Publishing, support.tunecore.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049053211-TuneCore-Believe-International, www.tunecore.com/, www.tunecore.com/artist-services, www.tunecore.com/direct-advance, www.tunecore.com/music-publishing-administration, www.tunecore.com/pricing, www.tunecore.com/splits. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

CATEGORY, NOT PRICE

What a label needs that a subscription does not carry

A consumer subscription is priced per account: one login, one catalogue, one person to pay. Label work is priced per relationship instead. A label needs catalogues that stay separate from each other, a statement per artist, splits that run without anyone doing arithmetic, an API for the systems around the music, and, if it distributes for other people, a portal wearing its own brand.

We captured and read 30 TuneCore pages on 21 September 2026, and what they describe is an artist product. "Manage Multiple Artists" and "Custom Label Name Release under your own independent label" sit on the Professional plan, with a "Cost Per Additional Artist Profile" of $14.99 in the same column. That describes what their published material covers rather than what they have built, so if one of those things is what you need, ask them.

One structural difference is worth stating flatly, because it is not an accusation. Who you contract with at TuneCore depends on where you live: "All non-U.S. client contracts are directly with Believe International", a company located in Luxembourg, under terms "effective as of April 1, 2021". Every LabelGrid customer contracts with Label Grid LLC of Denver, Colorado.

What a label runs on

Separate catalogues

Multi-label from Basic up, each label holding its own catalogue, statements and royalty rules.

Per-artist statements

Royalty accounting is part of the platform: statements and payouts, with the figures underneath them.

Automated splits from Basic up

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

One contracting entity

Label Grid LLC, Denver, Colorado, is the counterparty on every LabelGrid contract.

SAME PUBLIC API

Your releases on your own website

The LabelGrid WordPress plugin pulls your catalogue onto your own site, while @labelgrid/mcp and @labelgrid/cli run on the same public API. Publish a discography, script a bulk metadata change, or ask your own AI client what the catalogue earned.
See the WordPress plugin

FOR LABELS AND ARTISTS

What sits inside a distribution plan

Our distribution 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, automated royalty splits from Basic up and on every API tier rather than on Solo or GATE, and a person checking quality, metadata and rights before anything is delivered, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals. Every self-serve distribution plan opens with a seven-day free trial.

Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals carries a 20% fee here, the same 20% their plan table applies to money earned from TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Cover songs land in much the same place on both sides: they point at "The Harry Fox Agency or our partner company, TuneLicensing", we surface an Easy Song Licensing link when you mark a track as a cover, and the licence is one you buy and hold either way.

The arithmetic deserves honesty. One artist putting out two singles a year will pay less on a Rising Artist plan than on anything of ours, and a review queue is time nobody asked for.

Inside a distribution plan

Release review

A person checks quality, metadata and rights before delivery on every distribution plan, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Atmos and Hi-Res

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

Content ID

Available on every distribution plan, with a 20% fee on Content ID and UGC revenue earned through LabelGrid's deals.

Payouts

We charge nothing of our own to issue one, though a minimum payout threshold may apply to your account, and we let you know if it does.

FOR WHITE-LABEL OPERATORS

One account with profiles, or a portal each

TuneCore's Professional plan carries "Manage Multiple Artists" and a "Custom Label Name", with additional artist profiles charged separately. The LabelGrid shape is flat instead: every end customer is a full workspace, and Imprint puts those workspaces on your own brand and domain.

Artist profiles in one account

On the Professional plan at $54.99 a year, TuneCore list "Manage Multiple Artists" and "Custom Label Name Release under your own independent label", with a "Cost Per Additional Artist Profile" of $14.99 in the same column. Their support centre adds that the fee is charged once a year per unique artist name and that names are case-sensitive, so two stylisations count as two artists. For a roster whose artists do not want logins of their own, one dashboard is less to administer.

A workspace per customer

Every 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 costs something worth naming: a label customer does not get a tier of artists beneath it to supervise, because an artist who wants a label of their own signs up as their own end customer on your domain. Imprint is that portal under your brand, scoped at onboarding.

Past the published ceilings

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 the standard API tiers add label portals in packs of 5, 10 or 25 through support. A business outside those ceilings gets a custom deal: caps, platform fees, bulk label pricing for an operation running thousands of single-label artists, and in some cases royalty retention. The figures are agreed under NDA.

The ladder on the pricing page is the floor of that conversation rather than its ceiling. If what you need is several artist profiles inside one consumer subscription, their Professional plan is the cheaper way to buy it.

FOR API BUILDERS

Read the docs, then buy the plan

Infrastructure gets chosen for years rather than for a month, so the useful question is how much of it you can check before you sign. Our prices sit on the pricing page: every distribution plan and every API tier, including the starting prices for Custom Distribution and Custom API. The Engine documentation is public, with no login and no qualification form, and a sandbox is issued with the plan once that plan is active. Delivery covers DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, and @labelgrid/mcp and @labelgrid/cli are MIT licensed.

The meters are worth owning plainly. A standard API tier carries a track limit, a label limit and a cap on the royalties processed each month of $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000. On the standard API tiers, sustained excess over a track cap or the royalty cap starts a tier conversation rather than an overage charge, and extra label portals come as a pack. On Pro and Custom Distribution the track overage is a published per-track figure. Two limits belong here too: Imprint is scoped at onboarding, and Custom API is quoted from a published starting figure.

What an API plan meters

Tracks and labels

Each standard tier carries a track limit and a label limit; extra portals come in packs of 5, 10 or 25.

Royalty processing

Standard tiers cap royalties processed monthly at $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000, with no overage fee.

Sandbox

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

Open-source tooling

@labelgrid/mcp and @labelgrid/cli are MIT licensed, with 30 tools across eight toolsets in the MCP server.

WHERE TUNECORE WINS

Three reasons to choose TuneCore instead

Three places where TuneCore is the better answer, taken from their own pages.

The entry price

Their pricing page says: "Our Unlimited Plans (Rising, Breakout, and Professional) start at just $24.99/year and offer ongoing distribution for all your releases." Breakout Artist is $44.99 a year and Professional $54.99. One release at a time is priced separately, and the same figures return with a different meaning: "singles priced at $24.99/year and albums at $44.99/year", per release rather than per account. Nothing on our ladder competes with the entry number, and for a solo artist it is the right number to pay.

Advances against royalties

"TuneCore Direct Advance, powered by RoyFi, gives you funding now in exchange for a share of your future royalty earnings for a limited time." They describe "A one-time flat fee, no minimum time requirement, no loss of ownership, no copyright transfer, and early payoff options", with repayment taken automatically through a fixed percentage of royalties. LabelGrid funds no advances, on any plan or tier. If capital against future earnings is part of what you want from a distributor, they are a serious place to get it.

Publishing administration

TuneCore Publishing registers a songwriter's compositions globally for a "$75 one-time fee", keeps the writer's copyrights, and works alongside the writer's PRO: "We require you to affiliate with one in order to use our music publishing service". Sentric Music are named as their administration partner, and royalties usually start arriving "9-12 months after you register your songs", posted quarterly. LabelGrid does not administer publishing at all, so master and composition income cannot sit in one place with us.

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

WHICH ONE

Choose TuneCore if, choose LabelGrid if

Choose TuneCore if you are one artist, or a duo, putting out your own records. The entry plan costs less than anything on our ladder, all three plan prices are published, and switching puts your whole live catalogue on a single renewal date.

Choose them if you want an advance against future earnings, or publishing administration in the same account as distribution, or the services sold around both: mastering at "$5 per song", cover song licensing, promoted streams, playlist and blog pitching, video creation and merchandise.

Choose them, too, if several artist profiles inside one consumer subscription is the shape you want. Professional carries "Manage Multiple Artists" and a "Custom Label Name", and for a small stable roster that is less to run than a workspace each.

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 need your own brand

Imprint puts those workspaces on your own domain, under your own name rather than ours.

You build on an API

Public docs, three standard tiers plus Custom API from a published starting price, 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 for whoever you pick

Put them to us as readily as to anyone else.

01Ask which earnings the headline fee does not cover, and get the percentage for each in writing: social and user-generated revenue, Content ID, promotional programmes and sync.

02Ask whether you can read the price for a business your size without booking a call, and where the published number stops and a quotation starts.

03Ask what your percentage is a percentage of, which document defines that base, and whether that document is published somewhere you can reach.

04Ask whether a person reviews a release for quality, metadata and rights before delivery rather than after a complaint, on every plan, and how long the queue runs when busiest.

05Ask what happens to releases already live if you stop paying, and what it takes to move the catalogue elsewhere with its play counts and release dates intact.

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

07Ask when a sandbox arrives, whether it comes before or after you pay, and whether the tooling you would point at your catalogue is open source enough to read first.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns TuneCore, and which company do you actually contract with?
TuneCore is a Believe company. Their own page opens "TuneCore, owned by Believe, is the leading independent development partner for self-releasing artists", and the privacy policy served on tunecore.com is Believe's group policy, covering "BELIEVE SAS ... and its subsidiaries around the World, including TUNECORE". Which entity you sign with depends on where you live. The site Terms describe tunecore.com as the site for "TuneCore, Inc., a digital music distribution service for individuals based in the United States", while their support centre states that "All non-U.S. client contracts are directly with Believe International", a company "located in Luxembourg", under terms "effective as of April 1, 2021". LabelGrid was founded in 2017 and is a Merlin Network member based in Denver, Colorado. Every LabelGrid customer contracts with Label Grid LLC.

What does TuneCore cost, and is LabelGrid cheaper?
For one self-releasing artist, LabelGrid is not cheaper. TuneCore publish three Unlimited Plans: "RISING ARTIST $24.99/year", "BREAKOUT ARTIST $44.99/year" and "PROFESSIONAL $54.99/year". Releasing one record at a time is priced separately, and the same two numbers come back meaning something else: "singles priced at $24.99/year and albums at $44.99/year", per release rather than per account. A "Cost Per Additional Artist Profile" of $14.99 sits in the Professional column of their plan table. Some features are tied to a tier, and their support centre warns that a release using one cannot be finalised until you "upgrade to a higher tier plan". LabelGrid publishes every distribution plan and every API tier, including the Custom Distribution and Custom API starting prices, and none of them start as low as $24.99 a year.

Does TuneCore take a commission on your streaming royalties?
Not on distribution earnings, by their published claim: "You collect your earnings directly through your TuneCore account. Payments are processed monthly with no commission on your music revenue." Read the payout basis alongside it, because their support centre words it as net: "TuneCore is paying through 100% of the net receipts for that recording to the account owner." What is deducted to reach net is not defined on any of the 30 pages we captured on 21 September 2026. Two percentage meters also sit outside the no-commission claim: the 20% on social and user-generated earnings, and the 20% Accelerator commission on Spotify Discovery Mode. LabelGrid publishes the rate per plan instead: Solo, Basic and Pro retain 85%, 85% and 90% of standard-DSP royalties, while Custom Distribution and every API tier retain 95% on our own standard-DSP deals and 100% on your direct ones.

What does TuneCore charge on social, Content ID and Spotify Discovery Mode?
Two separate 20% meters, on two different pages. The plan-comparison row reads "Unlimited Releases to all Social Platforms Earn money from TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, & YouTube (20% fee)", and being a row of the plan table it applies across Rising, Breakout and Professional. YouTube Content ID is a plan feature, and its revenue falls under that same social row. Separately, TuneCore Accelerator is included with the plans and monetised on its own: "Accelerator applies a 20% commission ONLY on radio and autoplay streams generated directly through Spotify Discovery Mode", with artists keeping "100% of net revenue from all other Spotify streams". The parity is owed in the same breath: LabelGrid charges 20% on the Content ID and UGC revenue its own deals earn too, so their social number is ours and is not a point in our favour. We run no promotional programme, so no stream type carries a commission here.

What does TuneCore Publishing cost, and does LabelGrid administer publishing?
TuneCore Publishing is sold for a "$75 one-time fee" and registers a songwriter's compositions globally while the writer keeps copyright ownership. It runs alongside a performing rights organisation rather than instead of one: "We require you to affiliate with one in order to use our music publishing service." Sentric Music are named as the partner who "help with our publishing administration". Sync is a separate decision with two qualifiers that travel together: "If you opt into sync, any songs you submit for publishing administration will be exclusively eligible to be pitched and licensed by our sync team at a commission of 50% ... In short, sync is entirely optional." Opt out and you may work with other sync agents while still collecting publishing royalties. LabelGrid does not administer publishing or pitch sync at all, so if you want master and composition income in one place, that is a real reason to choose them.

Does LabelGrid offer advances like TuneCore Direct Advance?
No. LabelGrid funds no advances on any plan or tier, and this is one of the clearest reasons to choose them instead. TuneCore Direct Advance is "powered by RoyFi" and described as funding "now in exchange for a share of your future royalty earnings for a limited time", priced as "A one-time flat fee, no minimum time requirement, no loss of ownership, no copyright transfer, and early payoff options". Repayment "happens automatically through a fixed percentage of your royalties, with no monthly charges, no due dates, and no penalties". It is offered "to eligible artists based on their streaming performance", and the same page ties the size of an offer to where the catalogue lives: "Artists who move their catalog to TuneCore may qualify for larger advances and more favorable pricing on advances."

Who pays Spotify's artificial-streaming penalty?
The account holder does, on both platforms. TuneCore state it plainly, which is more than most publish: "Spotify currently charges a monthly €10 penalty to labels and distributors for each track deemed to have high levels of artificial streaming activity ... any fee will be passed to the account holder by TuneCore by charging account balance and/or the payment method on file in your account in your local currency." It is charged per track per month, so a track flagged across several months is charged each month. The parity belongs right here rather than in a footnote: LabelGrid's Terms reserve the same pass-through, worded to cover third-party fees, penalties, assessments, fines and similar amounts imposed on us by any DSP or platform, whether by deduction, invoice or a negative balance. Same upstream charge, disclosed on both sides.

How do TuneCore's Unlimited Plans work once you switch to one?
Their support centre sets out four mechanics worth knowing first. Everything moves to one date: "Once you switch to an Unlimited Plan, all of your live releases will be covered under a single yearly fee, including releases that were live before you switched", renewing together a year later. The move is one-way, since "once you switch to an Unlimited Plan, you cannot switch back to pay-per-release". Additional primary artist fees are "prorated for the remainder of your plan year", charged once a year per unique artist name, with names treated as case-sensitive so two stylisations count twice. Downgrading is neither instant nor self-serve: "When you downgrade your plan, the new plan will not be in effect until your next renewal date". On our side, plans are sized by a track limit and a label limit, and reaching either moves you up the published ladder.

Where are TuneCore's distribution terms published?
The document at tunecore.com/terms is headed "BELIEVE INTERNATIONAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS", effective July 31 2026, and it governs use of the websites for TuneCore in the United States and Believe International outside it. It is not the distribution agreement. It defers by name to a separate "Music Distribution Terms and Conditions" and to "Supplemental Terms – Publishing Administration", and on 21 September 2026 we could not find either published at a reachable URL. We are describing the structure of their public documents and saying nothing about what the distribution agreement contains, because we have not read it. Our own Terms of Service are published on our site, and the rate for every plan is on the pricing page.

What does LabelGrid offer that a consumer subscription does not?
Two products beyond distribution, and a route past the price list. Imprint is our white-label portal: your brand, your domain, and a workspace for every customer you distribute for, scoped at onboarding. Engine is our API, with public documentation, three standard tiers plus Custom API from a published starting price, DDEX ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2, a sandbox once the plan is active, and open-source tooling. Underneath both sits royalty accounting: separate catalogues per label from Basic up, statements per artist, automated splits, and no fee of our own for issuing a payout. Past the published ceilings, a custom deal covers caps, platform fees and bulk label pricing; the route is public and 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 API documentation is public; Imprint is quoted at onboarding. Each TuneCore value in the table above comes from one of the pages linked beneath it, read on 21 September 2026. If any of it is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.

See API Pricing