Soundee vs Airbit — Airbit Alternative for Producers (2025)

Overview of pricing structure

Both Airbit and Soundee offer free and paid plans, but they’re structured for slightly different types of producers.

• Airbit keeps things very simple with a free starter option and one paid tier.

• Soundee offers a free plan plus two paid levels, giving more room to grow without switching platforms.

Neither platform charges subscription commissions on their main selling plans, so the key differences are in how each tier scales with catalog size and access to more serious business tools.

Free plans: testing the waters

Both platforms let you start for free, but with different expectations:

• Airbit’s free plan is aimed at getting a small catalog online with modest upload room.

• Soundee’s free plan is intentionally limited and best seen as a sandbox to test the platform, not as a long‑term setup for serious sellers.

If you’re just experimenting with beat selling, either free option works; if you’re building a business, you’ll likely outgrow the free tiers quickly on both.

Paid tiers and how they scale

For producers ready to invest in their store:

• Airbit’s single paid tier is attractive if you want a straightforward jump from free to “unlocked” without thinking about multiple levels. It’s easy to understand, but you lose some flexibility in how gradually you upgrade.

• Soundee’s two paid tiers let you scale more intentionally:

  • A lower tier for growing catalogs and sellers who are starting to monetize seriously.

  • A higher tier for full catalogs and creators who want to run their entire business from one platform.

Because Soundee splits its paid plans into clear growth stages, it tends to suit producers who expect their needs to expand over time and prefer upgrading in steps rather than all at once.

Commission structure and what you actually keep

Airbit uses a zero-commission model across its main selling plans, so the platform itself doesn’t skim a percentage off your sales. Your take-home earnings are mostly impacted by standard processor fees (e.g., PayPal) rather than Airbit’s own cut. This keeps fee math straightforward, especially if you’re just starting out and want predictable revenue per sale.

Soundee combines a commission-based entry option with zero-commission paid plans. On the free tier, you trade a percentage of each sale for access to the ecosystem without a subscription. Once you step into Starter or Pro, Soundee drops platform commission entirely, so your margins look similar to Airbit while unlocking more control and tooling.

VAT, taxes, and financial control

Airbit doesn’t expose advanced VAT configuration, which can be simpler if you’re not yet dealing with cross-border tax rules, but limiting once you start selling globally or need precise compliance workflows.

Soundee gives you full control over whether and how VAT is applied at checkout. Paired with its tax-focused reporting, this makes it easier to align your beat store with how your business accountant expects you to handle digital sales.

Payout flow and cash visibility

On both platforms, sales from your own store can route directly to your payment accounts for quick access to funds. The main difference shows up on the marketplace side: Airbit holds marketplace earnings in an internal balance and enforces a payout delay, which can slow down cashflow if you rely heavily on marketplace traffic.

Soundee supports instant marketplace payouts, sending money straight to you instead of parking it in a wallet. For many producers, this “paid-when-you-sell” behavior makes budgeting and reinvesting in ads or gear more predictable.

Payments & Checkout Capabilities

Both Airbit and Soundee cover the basics with Stripe, PayPal, direct card processing, and wallet-friendly options like Apple Pay and Google Pay. Where they begin to diverge is in flexibility and future‑proofing. Soundee layers on crypto support and fine‑grained VAT control, giving serious businesses more options for global buyers and tax compliance, while Airbit keeps payments simpler and more “set‑and‑forget” for beginners.

Soundee also bakes in automatic collaborator split payments, which is useful for producers who frequently co‑produce, run loops businesses, or share catalogs. Airbit users can still collaborate, but splits have to be handled manually outside the platform.

Domains, Branding & Storefront Experience

Both platforms provide a hosted store, custom domains, subdomains, and embeddable players. Airbit focuses on a straightforward Infinity Store that’s easy to set up, whereas Soundee leans into deeper brand control.

Soundee supports multiple domains, domain routing, and mapping different domains or subdomains to different storefronts. Combined with support for multiple independent stores, this allows strategies like separate sites for beats, kits, and services or genre‑specific brands. Airbit is better suited for a single, central storefront.

Within the store itself, Soundee adds FAQ sections, type‑beat filtering, and granular embed filter control so you can send traffic to tightly curated selections from your catalog. Producers who only need one simple store may find Airbit’s lighter approach faster to launch, but multi‑brand setups clearly favor Soundee.

Licensing & Catalog Management

Airbit and Soundee both handle core licensing needs: non‑exclusive and exclusive rights, custom contracts, and ready‑made license templates. Airbit goes further with integrated YouTube Content ID, which is attractive if you want Content ID handled in the same ecosystem as your store. Soundee intentionally keeps Content ID separate, recommending dedicated services so its product can stay focused on selling and storefront performance.

Soundee introduces license upgrade logic, allowing buyers to move from a lower tier to a higher tier by paying only the price difference. This is helpful for long‑term customers who outgrow earlier licenses and for upsell strategies built into email or retargeting flows.

On the catalog side, both platforms support bulk editing, stems, reuploads, scheduling, and auto‑voicetags. Soundee adds advanced voicetag controls, including intro‑only tags and interval management. This lets you keep protection in place while presenting a more listenable experience for serious buyers.

Marketing, Promotions & Sales Automation

Airbit includes foundational tools like coupon codes and “buy X for X price” bundles, which cover many basic promotions. Soundee, by contrast, is built as a full marketing engine around your beat store.

Features such as abandoned cart tracking, cart recovery links, exit‑intent popups, countdown timers, and automatic coupon application from URLs support more aggressive conversion tactics. You can build email and ad campaigns that drop visitors into time‑limited offers or restore their previous cart with a single click. Airbit intentionally keeps its marketing simpler, which reduces setup but also limits experimentation with advanced funnels.

Soundee also offers advanced coupon rules, including license‑specific and product‑specific discounts, plus “buy X get X free” deals. This makes it easier to run targeted promotions—for example, discounting only exclusives or only a specific kit series—without manually adjusting prices every time.

Analytics, Insights & Integrations

Both Airbit and Soundee provide core analytics for plays, downloads, and sales, along with CSV export and pixel tracking for ad platforms. Airbit’s analytics are intentionally straightforward, giving you a clear read on what’s moving without heavy configuration.

Soundee pushes deeper into data. It adds referrer tracking, custom parameter tracking, store‑level conversion rates, VAT/tax reporting, and an advanced e‑commerce analytics suite with metrics like customer lifetime value, average order value, abandonment rate, and recovered revenue. For producers running serious campaigns, this makes it possible to measure which traffic sources, offers, and licenses actually drive profit rather than just plays.

On the integration side, Soundee supports webhooks, API keys, and an official Zapier integration. That opens the door to automations like sending buyers into specific email sequences, syncing customers to CRMs, or triggering Discord/Slack alerts on high‑value sales. Airbit does not currently offer this level of automation, which keeps the platform simpler but limits custom workflows as your business scales.