Vydia Alternative: Read the Price Before You Apply

Short answer: Vydia sells a full music business reached by application, covering distribution, rights, royalties, publishing, sync, label services and merch. LabelGrid sells the infrastructure a label or a platform runs on. Every account route on their captured pages begins with “APPLY”; a LabelGrid buyer reads every distribution plan and API tier price on the pricing page and starts a self-serve plan on a 7-day free trial. LabelGrid gates its upper products too. Every Vydia value in the table below comes from one of their own published pages.

In their 11 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026, every mention of an API is a third party’s API that Vydia consumes, and no developer or documentation surface was in that capture, which is an observation about what their published material covers rather than a statement about their product. The LabelGrid side of that is checkable in a browser right now: public API documentation without a sales call, an official open-source MCP server (@labelgrid/mcp, MIT) on the public MCP registry, DDEX ERN delivery as part of distribution, and DDEX ERN import over SFTP or S3 on the API plans and on Custom Distribution, with the sandbox opening once an API plan is active rather than before you buy.

Products on one backend

DDEX ERN versions

Free-trial days on self-serve distribution plans

Founded

Every Vydia value below is taken from one of their 11 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026 and linked beneath the table. Where their published material states nothing on a dimension, the row is left out rather than guessed at.

Each of the 7 Vydia values above is sourced from their own published pages, read 2026-09-23: vydia.com/, vydia.com/about/, vydia.com/publishing-admin-and-sync/, vydia.com/terms-conditions/, vydia.com/vydia-payment-methods-coverage/, vydia.com/white-label/. Dimensions we could not source from one of their primary pages are omitted rather than guessed.

You pay LabelGrid a flat yearly platform fee, and it steps with volume rather than turning into a percentage of your royalties. A customer on Solo or Basic keeps 85% of standard-DSP royalties and a customer on Pro keeps 90%. On Custom Distribution and the API tiers a customer keeps 95% of standard-DSP royalties earned through LabelGrid’s own deals and 100% of what they earn on their own direct deals or through SOBO, where LabelGrid is infrastructure only. UGC and Content ID revenue carries a 20% fee on revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals.

A good year therefore moves you up a published ladder instead of moving a percentage. The three standard API tiers carry a monthly cap on royalties processed, measured in US dollars: $35,000 on Starter API, $115,000 on Growth API and $350,000 on Scale API. Sustained excess starts a conversation about the next tier rather than an overage charge.

There is no comparable Vydia figure to set beside this and we are not going to invent one. Their distribution agreement is not in the capture, the Terms we read price a storage plan, and no percentage of any kind appears in their 11 distinct captured pages, read 23 September 2026.

Flat yearly fee

Custom Distribution and every API tier are billed as a flat yearly fee.

Retention by plan

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

Your direct deals

SOBO on Custom Distribution and the API tiers leaves you 100%.

Royalty processing cap

The standard API tiers meter the royalties processed each month, at $35,000, $115,000 and $350,000 in US dollars.

Our WordPress plugin syncs releases and artists, plus your download gates, into your own site every six hours, and every LabelGrid account can use it at no extra cost. The open-source MCP server on npm and the companion CLI run on that same public API, on an API plan, so an agent and the dashboard read one catalogue.

A label or an artist buys a published annual plan and starts on a 7-day free trial, which runs on the self-serve plans. Dolby Atmos mixes and hi-res masters are delivered on every distribution plan at no extra charge. ISRCs and UPCs come with the release and stay yours if you later move, and YouTube Content ID registration is available on the distribution plans, with UGC and Content ID revenue earned through LabelGrid’s deals carrying a 20% fee.

Automated royalty splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier, and Solo carries neither. LabelGrid issues the per-artist statement and pays the collaborator from the platform, so you are not the one sending each payment. Every release on a distribution plan is read by a person for metadata and rights before it is delivered, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals, and that check is included rather than sold as an add-on.

Vydia points this reader somewhere else. Their homepage card for the main offering addresses labels and agencies as well as artists, and the route to it begins with an application.

Free trial

Self-serve plans start with a 7-day free trial.

Atmos and hi-res

Dolby Atmos mixes and hi-res masters are delivered on every distribution plan at no extra charge, with no per-track fee.

Splits and statements

Automated splits and per-artist statements run from Basic up and on every API tier.

Release review

A person reads every release on a distribution plan for quality, metadata and rights, unless the account distributes only through its own direct deals.

Vydia and LabelGrid both sell a branded platform you can run as your own, and neither company publishes a price for it. What differs is how the accounts underneath are shaped and counted.

Vydia’s white-label page offers to “Fully realize your business’s potential through a custom branded platform” and to “Manage, monetize, and promote content across your entire roster”, under a call to action reading “LAUNCH YOUR WHITE LABEL”. The page runs to a little over 1,700 characters and states no price, no tier, no capacity and no term, so sizing it is a conversation.

Imprint is the LabelGrid white-label portal: your brand on your own domain, with every end customer in a full workspace of their own rather than a child account inherited down a tree. Label limits are published per plan, at one on Solo, three on Basic, five on Pro and fifty on Custom Distribution. On the API tiers the meter changes and counts end-customer portals instead, at five on Starter API, twenty-five on Growth, one hundred on Scale and unlimited on Custom API. Imprint pricing is scoped at onboarding.

Custom deals exist for a business that does not fit the published ceilings: too many tracks, too many labels, or too much monthly royalty income for any listed tier. Caps, platform fees and packaging are negotiable, and an operation running thousands of single-label artists is the case bulk label pricing was built for. The route is public; the numbers that come out of it stay between the two parties.

Each standard API tier can also add one fixed pack of extra label portals through support, at five on Starter API, ten on Growth and twenty-five on Scale. There is no second pack and no per-slot price, and past one pack the answer is the next tier.

LabelGrid publishes its API documentation openly, so an engineer reads the endpoints before anyone here knows their name. Three standard API tiers are priced on the pricing page alongside a Custom API starting price, and the sandbox is the honest limit: LabelGrid enables it once an API plan is active, not before you buy.

Delivery to stores uses the DDEX ERN message suite, and LabelGrid supports ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2. Ingest runs the other way over SFTP or S3, as a one-time catalogue import or a continuous feed, and it is available on the API plans and on Custom Distribution rather than on Solo, Basic or Pro. It needs support to switch on, and a one-time setup fee follows the feature wherever it is enabled.

Three meters size an API account: a track limit, an end-customer portal limit, and on the standard API tiers a monthly cap on royalties processed in US dollars of $35,000, $115,000 or $350,000. Crossing one moves you up the published ladder, and every meter is negotiable in a custom deal.

Public docs

The API documentation is public and readable before anyone speaks to sales.

Sandbox timing

The sandbox opens once an API plan is active.

DDEX versions

ERN 3.8.2, 4.3.0, 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 are supported; import runs on the API plans and Custom Distribution.

Open-source tooling

The open-source MCP server sits on npm and on the public MCP registry.

There are buyers Vydia serves better than we do, and pretending otherwise would only waste your time. These three cases are the clearest.

Vydia’s publishing team registers works to YouTube Content ID and to global PROs and CMOs, and their clients collect their publishing income through the Vydia platform. They also source sync opportunities, pitch content and negotiate the licences. LabelGrid does not offer publishing administration, publishing royalty collection or publisher connections on any plan, and no upgrade adds them; we distribute and account on the recording side. If publishing income is what you need administered, that is a reason to choose Vydia.

Vydia publishes a payout floor of “$35 in lifetime earnings”, a monthly payout calendar, and a fee schedule binding an amount to each of nine payment methods plus a separate 2.50% foreign-exchange row. Their payments page adds a country-by-country coverage table of payment methods and value dates. Those amounts are their payment processor’s, and their own page says Vydia charges nothing extra for payments. LabelGrid publishes no equivalent schedule and no floor of its own, so on the question of disclosure they are plainly ahead of us.

Their homepage names dedicated support, digital distribution, physical distribution, rights management, royalty management, label services, and merch and e-commerce. Vinyl and CDs go through retail and direct-to-consumer channels, merch is made and sold through a custom storefront, and their label-services team builds promotional campaigns with artists and their teams. LabelGrid sells three distribution products on one backend. If you want a single company holding all of it, theirs is the wider surface.

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

Choose Vydia if you need publishing income administered as well as recordings distributed. Their publishing team registers works to global PROs and CMOs and collects publishing income through their platform, and they pitch and negotiate sync on their clients’ behalf. LabelGrid does not administer publishing on any plan, so that need on its own decides it.

Choose them too if you want one company handling distribution, rights management and royalties, with merch and promotional campaigns beside them, or if you want to read the payout mechanics before you sign: their floor, their calendar, their processor’s fee schedule and their country coverage table all sit on their own pages. And choose them if applying suits you, because a conversation before access is how their published routes begin.

LabelGrid suits the other shape of buyer, the one who wants to price the thing first, run it in their own name, and build on top of it.

You price first

Every distribution plan and API tier price is on the pricing page.

You build on it

Public API documentation, an open-source MCP server and a CLI all run on the same endpoints as the dashboard.

You resell

Imprint puts your brand on your own domain.

You sign direct

On Custom Distribution and the API tiers, SOBO leaves you 100% of royalties from your own direct DSP deals.

Ask these of us as readily as of anyone else. The answers are what separate two platforms that look alike on a feature list.

01Ask what actually moves the bill: the number of tracks, the number of labels or portals, the volume of royalties processed, or a share of whatever the music earns.

02Ask whether you can read the price without a call, and which products are quoted instead. Every platform quotes something somewhere; the useful question is which parts, and why those parts.

03Ask whether a person checks a release before it is delivered, whether that check costs extra, and what happens to a release that fails it.

04Ask what happens to your catalogue if you leave: who holds the ISRCs and UPCs, whether the licence is exclusive, and how long a takedown takes to clear every store.

05Ask which DDEX ERN versions are supported in each direction, whether ingest runs over SFTP or S3, and whether import is included on the plan you are actually buying.

06Ask whether there is a sandbox and when it opens, and whether you can see it before the plan is paid for or only afterwards.

07Ask whether the AI and automation tooling is open source and installable today, or described on a marketing page, then check the registry or the repository yourself.

Every LabelGrid distribution plan and API tier is priced on the pricing page, and Imprint is quoted at onboarding. Every Vydia value in the table above is taken from one of their 11 distinct captured pages, linked beneath it and read 23 September 2026. If any of it is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it.