record label platform pricing. every step.
three tiers, from a single artist property up to custom catalog infrastructure. 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 herebefore any build, and it is how most engagements start.
fixed fee
credited in full against the engagementone week
a fixed-price read of how your roster actually sells direct today, and what it would take to own that channel. you finish with the scope document the build runs on, whether or not the build is with this studio.
book the diagnostic- 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 walkthrough call on the document, with your team on it
- the document is yours either way, and it is specific enough to hand to another studio
if you go ahead within 90 days, the full diagnostic fee comes off the engagement. if you do not, you keep the scope and owe nothing further.
What it costs.
in full, up frontone artist. one property.
the label, plus five artist properties, at whatever stage each one is. more scale from there.
custom infrastructure. scoped one at a time.
Artist
a signed artist gets their own platform instead of a page on somebody else's. built to the artist's identity, not to a template, and it does not wait on a tour or a merch line to look like something.
- 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 and the roster running under it. one catalog storefront, one customer list, one dashboard anyone at the label can open.
- label platform plus five artist properties, and 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
when the thing you need does not 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
scoped one at a time
most engagements start with the diagnostic above, and builds start in the order they are signed. no urgency in that, it is just how the calendar works.
you open a line
one message with the label, the roster and what has to move. no intake form, no discovery deck. or the studio reaches you first. either way it starts as a conversation rather than a proposal.
we scope it in writing
the diagnostic, one week, at a fixed fee. an audit of how the roster sells now, your own fee math on real volume, and a written scope covering every property and system, what ships and what does not. the number and the ship date sit in that document rather than in a follow-up, and the fee is credited in full against the build.
the number locks
the published number is where a tier starts. what it settles at is what the scope says, and once that is signed it does not move. widen the scope later and we price the addition on its own, never the whole build again.
you pick the tier
one artist property, the label platform plus five artist properties, or custom catalog infrastructure. which tier an engagement lands in follows from the scope rather than from a negotiation, and the number is written down once and does not move after that.
published. scope sets the final number
you pay, in full
one payment, in full, before the build starts. that is what holds the slot on the calendar. no deposit structure, no milestone schedule to keep track of. stripe or invoice, whichever is easier.
one payment, before the build starts
your fans' money. 100% yours
it ships on the date
the timeline comes out of the scope, the same way the number does, and it goes in writing with it. for reference, the last single-property build went signed scope to live in eight days. whatever the date turns out to be, it is the date the studio works to.
scope to live. about eight days
you own it, and it keeps moving
every asset transfers into your name at launch. your team edits day to day in the dashboard at no monthly cost. add a retainer and structural changes ship on a text.
after launch: two ways to run it.
included. no monthly licence.
your team runs it
every engagement ships with a dashboard. copy, prices, art, drops, dates, roster changes, all edited by you. the platform itself never carries a monthly fee.
optional. billed monthly.
or keep the studio on retainer
structural work: new features, new properties, release-day builds, integrations. you text it, the studio ships it, usually same day. month to month, cancel any month.
what a retainer covers.
changes on text
copy, prices, art, links, dates. you send it, the studio changes it. answered within the hour on a working day, new york time, most of it live the same day.
release days are covered
tell the studio 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 actually costs a label money, and it is 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
signings, drops, campaigns. the platform changes with them. no rebuild, no second engagement.
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?
the diagnostic first, at a fixed fee and credited in full against 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 produces your number, and once the scope is signed that number is fixed in writing before anything is built.
when do we pay?
the diagnostic is paid before it starts, and the build is paid in full before it starts, with the diagnostic fee credited against it. one payment each time, stripe or invoice, whichever is easier. no deposit structure 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, priced monthly for continuous engineering, and cancels 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, not less. 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 reads which parts of the catalog actually move before anything gets built, so the number is set against 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 on their side of the line. this is the same job built once, on your domain, and handed over. worth pricing both before you decide.
what is actually in each tier.
line by line, so you can see what you get and what it costs without booking a call. anything not listed is not assumed: if it matters to you and it is not here, it goes in the scope and it moves 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 configures rather than hands backup
- 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. a change can also be declined and parked for 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. which of those happens is decided in the scope rather than argued about later, and removing one artist does not 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 do not have to match across the roster. that mapping is part of what the scope documents.
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. the published figure is where the tier starts; scope sets the final number and the timeline, both in writing. retainers are optional and month to month.