record label platform pricing. every step.
three tiers, from $50,000, running from one act's property on the label's platform up to custom catalog infrastructure. the scope decides where the number and the timeline land, both go in writing before work starts, and every asset transfers into your name at launch.
The D2C Diagnostic
start hereit comes before any build, and it's how most projects start.
fixed fee
the full fee comes off the buildone week
a fixed-price look at how your roster actually sells direct today, and what it would take to own that channel. you walk away with the scope document the build runs on, whether or not you build with us.
- an audit of where the roster sells now, and what each layer takes
- your own fee math, run on your real volume rather than an example
- who currently owns the customer data, what it would take to hold it, and what it could tell you once you do
- a written scope: what gets built, in what order, with the number and the timeline
- a call where we walk your team through the document
- the document is yours either way, and it's specific enough to hand to another studio
if you go ahead within 90 days, the full diagnostic fee comes off the build. if you don't, you keep the scope and owe nothing more.
What it costs.
in full, up frontone property, for one act on a label's roster or one music company.
the label plus five artist properties, at whatever stage each act is, with room to add more.
custom infrastructure, scoped one project at a time.
Artist
the act gets its own platform instead of a page on somebody else's. it's built around the act's identity and runs on the label's domain and the label's customer list.
- one custom property on a domain you own
- direct checkout in your merchant account
- email and SMS capture from day one, before there is anything to sell
- release pages, tour dates, booking
- self-serve dashboard for the team
- full asset transfer at launch
Roster
standard
the label's own platform with the roster running under it: one catalog storefront, one customer list, and one dashboard anyone at the label can open.
- label platform plus five artist properties, priced per property beyond that
- developing acts get a property built to grow the list first, with the store opening when the tour and the merch exist
- one catalog storefront across the whole roster
- licensing and delivery automation per sale, beats and stems included
- your customer list, wired to your CRM, with the intelligence layer scoped on request
- a login for everyone at the label who needs one
- full asset transfer at launch
Catalog
for when the thing you need doesn't exist yet: licensing engines, splits and royalty-facing dashboards, distribution integrations, a property per release across a catalog.
- unlimited properties across the catalog
- your own marketplace, with every producer on the roster selling under the label rather than on beatstars or airbit
- custom software built to your operation
- royalty and splits dashboards, with the numbers each side is allowed to see
- the intelligence layer: segmentation, propensity, catalog generation
- integrations with the systems you already run
- retained engineering after launch
- direct line to the person writing the code
- full asset transfer at launch
most projects start with the diagnostic above, and builds start in the order they're signed. there's no rush in that, it's just how the calendar works.
you reach out
send us one message: your label, your roster and what you need done. there's no intake form and no discovery deck. sometimes we get in touch first. either way, it starts as a conversation.
we scope it in writing
it starts with the diagnostic: one week, $10,000. you get an audit of how the roster sells now, your own fee math on real volume, and a written scope covering every property and system, including what ships and what doesn't. the number and the ship date go into that document, and the full fee comes off the build.
the price is locked
the price comes from the scope, not from a list. once the scope is signed, it doesn't move. if you widen the scope later, we price the addition on its own and never reprice the whole build.
you pick the tier
one artist property, the label platform plus five artist properties, or custom catalog infrastructure. the scope decides which tier your project falls into, and the number is written down once and doesn't change after that.
you pay, in full
one payment, in full, before the build starts. that's what holds your spot on the calendar. there's no deposit and no milestone schedule to keep track of. pay by stripe or invoice, whichever is easier.
it ships on the date
the timeline comes from the scope, the same way the number does, and it goes in writing with it. for reference, the last single-property build went from signed scope to live in eight days. whatever the date turns out to be, that's the date we work to.
you own it, and it keeps moving
every asset transfers into your name at launch. your team handles day-to-day edits in the dashboard at no monthly cost. with a retainer, you text us structural changes and we ship them.
after launch: two ways to run it.
included. no monthly licence.
your team runs it
every build ships with a dashboard, so you edit copy, prices, art, drops, dates and roster changes yourself. the platform itself never carries a monthly fee.
optional. billed monthly.
or keep the studio on retainer
for structural work: new features, new properties, release-day builds and integrations. you text it and we ship it, usually the same day. it's month to month, and you can cancel any month.
what a retainer covers.
changes by text
copy, prices, art, links, dates. you send it and we change it. we answer within the hour on a working day, new york time, and most of it goes live the same day.
release days are covered
tell us the date and someone is on it while the drop is live. a checkout that breaks at 2am on release night is the one failure that really costs a label money, and it's the one nobody else in this market covers.
new builds inside the platform
a new artist property, a members area, a release microsite, a feature nobody else in the market has.
it moves with the roster
the platform changes with your signings, drops and campaigns, without a rebuild or a second project.
the infrastructure stays up
hosting, domains, checkout, uptime. your team never thinks about the plumbing again.
the money questions.
what does a record label platform cost?
first the diagnostic, $10,000, and the full fee comes off whatever follows. then one of three tiers: a single artist property, the label platform plus five artist properties, or custom catalog infrastructure. the diagnostic is what gives you your number, and once the scope is signed, that number is fixed in writing before anything is built.
when do we pay?
you pay for the diagnostic before it starts, and for the build in full before it starts, minus the diagnostic fee. one payment each time, by stripe or invoice, whichever is easier. there's no deposit and no milestone schedule.
is there a monthly fee?
not on the platform. your team edits copy, prices and releases in the dashboard at no monthly cost. a retainer is optional, billed monthly for ongoing engineering, and you can cancel it any month.
who owns the work when it ships?
you do. code, domains, merchant account, customer list and analytics transfer into your name at launch. there is no licence to renew and nothing of yours sits on a Studio Raine account.
we are an estate, or mostly back catalog. is this worth it?
usually more so. a catalog with demand and no direct channel is the cleanest version of the problem: those records already sell, they just sell through somebody else's checkout at somebody else's rate. the diagnostic shows which parts of the catalog actually sell before anything gets built, so the number is based on real volume instead of a guess.
what else could we buy instead?
for the site and the store, plenty of good studios will quote you. for the parts underneath, the alternatives are mostly products rather than studios: beatstars or airbit if you want a beat marketplace, curve or reprtoir if you want royalty software. those are subscriptions you move into, priced per seat or per transaction, and the buyer stays their customer. we do the same job once, on your domain, and hand it over. it's worth pricing both before you decide.
what is actually in each tier.
line by line, so you can see exactly what you get before anyone quotes it. anything not listed isn't assumed. if it matters to you and it's not here, it goes in the scope and changes the number.
| Artist | Roster | Catalog | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artist properties | 1 | up to 5 | unlimited |
| Label platform | no | yes | yes |
| Storefront | single artist | one across the roster | per catalog, per release |
| Checkout | your Stripe | your Stripe | your Stripe, multi-entity |
| Licensing automation | in scope if you sell licences | per sale, standard | custom engine |
| Beat and stem store | single producer | across the roster | multi-seller marketplace |
| Audience capture before there is a store | yes | yes, roster-wide | yes, plus segmentation |
| Customer list into your CRM | yes | yes, roster-wide | yes, plus custom fields |
| Logins | as many as you need | separate for the label and each artist | separate per artist, per seller |
| Release and tour pages | yes | yes | yes |
| Self-serve dashboard | yes | yes | yes |
| Custom integrations | not included | scoped per system | core to the tier |
| Retained engineering | optional retainer | optional retainer | included in scope |
| Full asset transfer | yes | yes | yes |
| Monthly licence on the platform | none | none | none |
what moves the number, and which way.
- more artist properties than the tier coversup, per property
- catalog size, and how much of it sells directup with volume and variants
- custom licence tiers, splits or royalty-facing viewsup. this is Catalog-tier work
- integrations with systems that have no public APIup, and scoped on their own first
- migrating an existing store, customers or order historyup with the state of the data
- multi-currency and tax handling, which the studio sets up instead of leaving to youup
- you already have a design system to build todown
- assets, copy and product data ready at kickoffdown, and it moves the date too
what is not included, in writing.
- photography and video production, and the shoots they need. art direction OF the build is a service, see /services
- ongoing content writing after launch, a blog or a newsletter for example. the copy the build itself needs is written as part of it, see /services
- paid media, ad management and campaign spend
- royalty administration, rights administration, and audit of a distributor's statements. the dashboard is built to your deal terms, the accounting stays yours
- distribution, publishing or DSP relationships
- third-party fees: hosting and the database the platform runs on, Stripe processing, domain registration and renewal, any SaaS you choose to plug in. the studio opens and configures every one of those accounts in your name, and their costs are yours
- content entry for a back catalog, unless the scope says otherwise
the only things the studio needs from you.
- one person who can say yes
- brand assets, or the go-ahead to art-direct from scratch
- whatever product data already exists. the studio structures it from there
- access to the systems you want connected, once
- answers inside the review windows in the scope, because the ship date depends on them
how a change mid-build is handled.
anything outside the signed scope is priced on its own, in writing, before it gets built. it never reopens the original number, and it never quietly moves the ship date: if the change moves the date, the new date is written down alongside the price. you can also turn a change down and park it until after launch, which is usually the right call once something is already selling.
the ownership and data questions.
who owns the code and the IP?
you do. the code is written for you and assigned to you at launch, with the domains, the merchant account, the customer list and the analytics. there is no licence back to the studio, no per-seat term, and nothing in the build that stops working if the relationship ends.
what happens to an artist's property if they leave the roster?
each artist sits on their own property and their own domain, so it can be handed to the artist, taken down, or kept as catalog. the scope decides which of those happens, so nobody argues about it later, and removing one artist doesn't touch the rest of the roster.
can artists on different deal structures share one platform?
yes. each artist property carries its own checkout routing and its own permissions, so splits, licence terms and payout destinations don't have to match across the roster. the scope writes that mapping down.
where does fan data live, and who controls it?
in your systems. checkout runs through your merchant account and buyers land in your CRM, so the label is the controller and the studio is not in the data path once the build is handed over. if you want a processing agreement covering the build window itself, that goes in the scope.
who is the merchant of record, and who handles sales tax?
you are. checkout runs through your stripe account, so the label is the seller on every order, and sales tax registration and remittance sit with you rather than with the studio. that is the trade for owning the checkout: the platforms that take tax off your hands do it by being the seller themselves, which is what puts them between you and the fan. the studio configures the tax engine so rates are calculated per jurisdiction at the point of sale and the reporting comes out of your own account, on a third party service billed to you. where you have to register is a question for your accountant.
do sales on our own store count toward the charts?
only through a reporting route, and the route is yours rather than the studio's. luminate, the official charts company, aria and fimi count sales that reach them from a registered reporter, so a store on your own domain does not report by itself the way a chart-registered retailer does. labels solve this by reporting through their distributor, by registering the store, or by paying a reporting service. the platform's side of it is the sales file, exported in the format and on the schedule that route asks for. which route applies to you gets settled in the diagnostic, before anything is built.
every tier is a one-time build with no monthly licence on the platform itself, paid in full before the build starts. scope sets the number and the timeline, both in writing. retainers are optional and month to month.