Feature Comparison
FOX vs. RPX
On this page you can find the complete feature list for both, FOX and RPX.
A quick way to find out if you need the higher end system (RPX) is to answer any of these questions with "yes":
A quick way to find out if you need the higher end system (RPX) is to answer any of these questions with "yes":
- Do you use escalations / sliding shares in our contracts?
- Do you apply different shares, based on price changes (high price, budget, low budget, etc.)?
- Do you base our royalty calculations on PPDs, not NET or FIX prices?
- Do you have to convert sales report data programmatically to achieve the necessary price base for royalty calculations (e.g. Insert PPDs based on a reported price code)?
PLEASE NOTE THAT ROYALTY PRODUCER X (RPX) IS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR OUR INTERNAL USE AS PART OF OUR RPX ROYALTY SERVICES.
RPX is operated by your personal royalty manager on private server and you have remote access to your solution and data at any time.
- translate PPD, based on a price code table
- calculate PPD recursively from NET, based on two different percentages for two different country groups (e.g. Domestic / Export)
- calculate PPD recursively from PPD, based on two different percentages for two different country groups (e.g. Domestic / Export)
- calculate from Total / Units (if no unit price is provided)
- calculate NET from PPD based on two different percentages for two different country groups (e.g. Domestic / Export)
- calculate NET from NET based on two different percentages for two different country groups (e.g. Domestic / Export)
- calculate from Total / Units (if no unit price is provided)
- all header labels showing up on the statements
- carry over information
- statement intro and outro text
- statement footer
- invoice body text
FOX was
developed with a very fast setup procedure in mind. If your metadata is
available as CSV, Text/Tab or Excel file, you can build a fully working
royalty system with just a couple of clicks. During development, we
always had the thousands of modern companies in mind, that keep their
royalty structure simple - on purpose. RPX (Royalty Producer X) covers even complex contract scenarios. Historically grown companies will find the right options to move their legacy contracts with sliding shares and deductions into the era of music streaming. Legend yes = features is present / no = feature not available / opt = optional feature |
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FOX | RPX | |
General FOX is a royalty software you can buy and RPX is the software we use for our royalty services that you can subscribe to. |
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Software can be purchased as perpetual license | yes | no |
Software can be adapted to business needs by the user preferences | yes | yes |
Software can be adapted to business needs by our individual programming | no | yes |
User input is considered for subsequent updates | yes | yes |
Contacts Contact entries represent the licensor who is receiving a royalty statement. All statement options can be set individually: |
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Period and Interval | yes | yes |
Statement Priority 1-3 can be set per contact | yes | yes |
Statement Language (Local/English) | yes | yes |
Statement Currency | yes | yes |
Tax | yes | yes |
WHT (Withheld Tax Report) | yes | yes |
Statement File Options | yes | yes |
Auto-invoicing Options (automatically issue invoices to your own company) | opt | yes |
Payout Limits (when limit is not
reached, amounts are carried over) |
yes |
yes |
Activate recurring fees (amount
per month, will be added automatically to royalty statements) |
yes | yes |
Account
Groups Account Groups give full controllover cross-colateralization between multiple accounts. All accounts inside an account group will be cross-colateralized. Carry overs are always administered on the account group level. Profit Split deals are based on the total income of an account group, with eventually multiple accounts. |
yes | yes |
Accounts Accounts describe the contract situation with a contact (licensor) |
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Template system to set up
typical contract structures once and re-use them for new accounts Free definition of different shares for any combination of bundle type, sales type and territory for bundles and assets |
opt | yes |
Classic royalty share, based on
net Income, individually for any combination of release type, sales type and
territory. Separate share for bundles (albums) and assets (tracks) |
yes | yes |
Unlimited release types, sales types and
country groups (territories, country sets), as defined by the user |
yes | yes |
Deduction in percent,
individually for any combination of sales type and territory, user
defined deduction name |
yes | yes |
Profit Split Deals, based on net income and expenses, support for profit split deal advances | yes | yes |
Deduction of US mechanicals,
from unit prices controlled by sales type and countries |
yes |
yes |
Automatic WHT report
(withholding tax) accompagnying statements, activated per contact |
yes |
yes |
Separate price share to
generally deduct income, before applying the royalty share |
yes | yes |
Unlimited accounts per
bundle,/asset user definable account share on bundle/asset, default is
pro rata |
yes | yes |
PPD price base |
no | yes |
Fixed price base |
yes | yes |
Separate packaging deduction |
no |
yes |
Alternative rata settings: asset
(pro rata), time (pro rata temporis), per asset, no rata |
no |
yes |
Sales quota (use only a
percentage of sold units for royalty calculations) |
no |
yes |
Reserves: Built reserves and
release reserves in the next statement period |
yes |
yes |
Reserves: Built reserves and
release reserves in the next statement period or in up to 4 stages, in
multiple periods |
no |
yes |
Support for price based royalty
shares (e.g. Budget, Sellout, etc) |
no |
yes |
Support for timely programmed
royalty shares (e.g. advertised sales in a certain period) |
no |
yes |
Escalation sets (sliding
shares), based on units |
no |
yes |
Escalation sets (sliding
shares), based on income (also useful for investment deals) |
no |
yes |
Escalation sets (sliding
shares), based on paid royalties |
no |
yes |
Escalation sets supporting unit
equivalents (e.g. 6000 streams equal one bundle sale) |
no |
yes |
Escalation sets grouping sales
from multiple sources (e.g. different escalation sets for domestic and
export sales) |
no |
yes |
Metadata All sellable bundles and assets are administered in the metadata module. A bundle is a collection of multiple assets. An asset is the smallest, sellable entity and can have unlimited accounts. When adding assets to a bundle (creating the playlist), all asset related accounts are automatically added to the bundle, accordingly. Additionally, separate accounts can be added to bundles (e.g. a compiler or an artwork artist). |
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Bundles can have multiple
reference numbers / EANs / UPCs |
yes |
yes |
Bundle can have playlist |
yes |
yes |
Bundle automatically adopts
accounts from assets of the playlist |
yes |
yes |
Bundle automatically assigns a
pro rata share to accounts, when adding an asset to a playlist (can be
manually altered by the user) |
yes |
yes |
Bundle can handle pro rata
temporis shares, per asset fixed royalties and no rata, individually on
a contract level |
no |
yes |
Bundle can be programmed to set
specific sales types for a given period (e.g. high price for the first
3 selling months, afterwards budget) |
no |
yes |
Bundle can be programmed to set
specific sales types, based on a deviance from a given high price (e.g.
when price is less than 80% of high price, use the budget sales type,
when less than 60%, use low budget sales type, etc.) |
no |
yes |
Bundle can belong to a group
(e.g. label) to help administration and facilitate searches |
yes |
yes |
Bundle can belong to a catalog
(catalog information can be used to limit lookups during sales imports
to a certain set of metadata, allows the use of a publishing and
recording catalog at the same time) |
yes |
yes |
Bundle can have a specific
bundle type that will issue different royalties, based on the type
(e.g.: album, compilation, sublicense or CD,LP,DVD) |
yes |
yes |
Bundle can have format
information for administration purposes only |
yes |
yes |
Bundle can administer US
mechanicals |
opt |
opt |
Asset can have multiple
reference numbers (ISRCs, ContentIDs, etc,) |
yes |
yes |
Asset can be added multiple
times with the same ISRC to different bundles and still be identified
separately, per bundle |
yes |
yes |
Asset can receive new ISRC by
user input |
yes |
yes |
Asset can receive new ISRC by
system function (system can automatically allocate new ISRCs, based on
company code and year) |
yes |
yes |
Asset can administer US
mechanicals |
opt |
opt |
Asset can have a specific asset type that will issue different royalties, based on the type (e.g.: track, video or lyrics, etc.) | no |
yes |
Channels Channels are the source of sales information or expenses. A channel can be an aggregator or DSP, as well as a specific music store, a license partner or physical distributor. Several options on a channel facilitate maximum comfort for data import, including post processing features to convert and enrich sales data as needed. |
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Setup currency and country per
channel |
yes |
yes |
Specific custom import per
channel (set import order once, then re-use comfortably) |
yes |
yes |
Supported file formats: TAB,
CSV, XLSX, XLS, MER, FileMaker12 |
yes |
yes |
Custom Import for iTunes/Apple
sales repors (fully automated import script can process all sales of a
month at once, including paid totals) |
opt |
yes |
Custom Import for GoogePlay
sales reports |
opt |
yes |
Setting: Allow deduction of US
mechanicals |
yes |
yes |
Setting: Evaluate ISRC or the
combination of EAN/UPC & ISRC to identify assets |
yes |
yes |
Setting: Convert numbers into
system format (seemlessley work with files in different number formats) |
yes |
yes |
Setting: Allow country and/or
sales type to be skipped for more data compression (reduce overall
amount of sales data, when possible) |
yes |
yes |
Setting: Standard sales type as
a fall back option, when no sales type is reported |
yes |
yes |
Setting: Activate WHT
(witholding tax) reporting for a channel and set up related countries.
WHT reports are generated per contact, along with the royalty statement |
opt |
yes |
Setting: Restrict lookup of
metadata items from sales to a specific catalog (facilitates the use of
the same system for separate recording and publishing rights catalogs.
Gives productive results, even when looking up metadata based on
artist/title information, only. |
yes |
yes |
Setting: Automatically set a
specific store for all imported sales or identify and streamline store
information. (e.g. Apple Music, iTunes, Beats could be combined into
one single store. E.g. all Amazon stores per country could be combined
to one Amazon store. E.g. smaller, irrelevant stores can be combined to
an "Other" store. Allows to report stores) |
yes |
yes |
Setting: Simple post processing
of reported prices by a given factor (e.g. reduce the reported totals
by a distribution fee to obtain a net income) |
yes |
no |
Setting: Complex post processing
of reported price information. PPD and NET can be processed
independently. If only one price is reported (either NET or PPD), the system will set the unreported price to the same value as the reported one. |
no |
yes |
Import and administer price code
tables to provide the post processing functions above |
no |
yes |
Translate reported sales type
based on one sales type
field/column (e.g. "HQ stream", "Streaming" and "non permanent
download" can be translated to "stream" |
yes |
no |
Translate reported sales type
based on up to two sales type
field/columns (e.g. reported "digital" & "Spotify" can be
translated to "Stream" |
no |
yes |
Post process / set Sales Types
based on bundle settings for high price deviations or fixed sales types
for a certain period (see metadata section) |
no |
yes |
Sales Sales are generally imported for a chosen channel and a chosen month of the year. Sales data can also be added manually at any time. Expenses are also seen as sales (though, negative ones). |
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Support for foreign currencies
(all reports are converted into the home currency on payment) |
yes |
yes |
Separated "Sales Period" and a "Royalty Period", so the user can always decide when specific sales data should be accounted for on a royalty statement. | yes |
yes |
A copy of all original reports
is saved into the system for audit trail purposes. |
yes |
yes |
Option to lock a report and
remove sales data from the live royalty system,
keeping the databases small and snappy. Locked reports can be unlocked
at any time. Sales data from a locked report is not available for
royalty calculations, but still available in the reporting section for
business intelligence use. |
yes |
yes |
Automatic archiving of sales
allow the later use in business intelligence, even when report is locked |
yes |
yes |
The paid amount for a report can
be entered manually to reflect possible bank fees and other deductions
or by clicking a button to insert the total in home currency, based on
the current exchange rate. |
yes |
yes |
Royalty
Statements Royalty Statements can be generated at any time for any contact and its current period. New statements have the "pending" status and the contact is locked for new statement generation, until the statement status is moved to "approved". This makes sure that there is only one statement version per contact and period. On statement generation, all necessary files are generated by the system on-the-fly. |
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Three different PDF statement
types available which can be chosen on a contact level: minimal,
compact, detailed (aggregated reports) |
yes |
yes |
Statement summary file as XLSX |
yes |
yes |
Sales details file in TAB, CSV,
XLSX to accompany the PDF (the sales detail file holds all original
sales information behind a statement) |
yes |
yes |
WHT (Withheld Tax) Report, as
set up on a contact level |
opt |
yes |
Automatic (self-) invoice can be
generated along with the statement. (licensor issues a statement to
your company) |
opt |
yes |
Payout Limit can be set on a
contact level. If the statement royalties do not reach the payout
limit, the statement amount will be carried over to the next royalty
period. |
yes |
yes |
Send statement files as one ZIP
file via email directly from the system via smtp server or via email
client (Mac: Apple Mail, Windows: Outlook only) |
yes |
yes |
Automatic email body generation,
based on system settings |
yes |
yes |
US
Mechanicals FOX and RPX offer two different, optional US Mechanicals reporting systems. One emraces the classic reporting to a publisher or agency, like Harry Fox. The other one is based on a pre-paid Mechanicals system, where a certain amount of digital sales are pre-licensed and pre-paid. The operating mode must be chosen once by the user and can not be mixed. |
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Classic: Set up and administer
an HFA code table, where each sales type can be activated or
deactivated for reporting (e.g. Downloads: yes, Streams: no) |
opt |
opt |
Classic: Administer the current
US statutory rate centrally, in the system settings |
opt |
opt |
Classic: Administer a current MX statutory rate centrally, in the system settings | opt |
opt |
Classic: Set up publisher,
author and "report to" information per asset (supports multiple
licensors) |
opt |
opt |
Classic: Set up rate per
assigned licensor on asset: current US statutory rate, custom US rate,
MX rate (current staturory rate will always use the current rate from
the central system settings, custom rates will always stay as entered) |
opt |
opt |
Classic: Create US Mechanical
reports to right holders for any period at any time |
opt |
opt |
PrePaid: Administer licensed
songs and connect one licensed songs to multiple assets (recordings) |
opt |
opt |
PrePaid: Administer paid
licenses and control current balances for each licenses song |
opt |
opt |
PrePaid: Issue automatic
warnings when license balance runs low for a song (individual threshold
can be set for each song) |
opt |
opt |
Analytics You can filter statement and sales data from the archive for analytical / business intelligence purposes at any time, even when sales reports have been locked to keep the royalty system small and snappy. |
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Charting System: Top Ten
countries, accounts, channels, stores |
yes |
yes |
Charting System: Sales (units
and income) over a period of time |
yes |
yes |
Reporting: Filter royalty
statement data by: period, bundle/asset, sales type, country group,
channel, store, contact, account, account group |
yes |
yes |
Reporting: Filter sales data by: period, bundle/asset, refno, sales type, country group, channel, store, contact, account, account group | yes |
yes |
Settings The general application settings allow a very deep indiviualisation of the royalty system, including contract structures and language variables |
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Royalties: Set up unlimited
sales types that will be translated on sales import sand used for
individual royalty shares (e.g download, stream, physical, sublicense) |
yes |
yes |
Royalties: Set up unlimited
country groups that will be translated on sales import sand used for
individual royalty shares (e.g. domestic, export) |
yes |
yes |
Royalties: Set up unlimited
bundle types that will be translated on sales import sand used for
individual royalty shares (e.g. album, compilation) |
no |
yes |
Royalties: Set up unlimited asset types that will be translated on sales import sand used for individual royalty shares (e.g. track, song, video) | no |
yes |
Royalties: Set up unlimited
account templates to save time when creating new accounts. A template
represents a typical contract setup and can be altered when creating a
new account, based on a template. |
yes |
yes |
Contacts: Set up default
settings for newly added contacts, like language, currency, tax and
statement settings |
yes |
yes |
Recurring fees: Set up recurring
fees for assets and bundles, separately. The name of the fees is user
definable. The system can be told to add recurring fees to newly added
metadata, automatically or manually. Recurring fees will be generated
on a montly basis and can be switched on and off on a bundle or asset
basis |
yes |
yes |
US Mechanicals: Set up the US
mechanical system and choose between classic report mode and pre-paid
mode |
opt |
opt |
Sales import: 30 import slots
for digital sales (units and net tota, simple post processingl) |
yes |
yes |
Sales import: 1 import slot for
phyisical sales (sales, returns, net total simple post processing) |
yes |
no |
Sales import: 20 import slots
for phyiscal sales (sales, returns, NET, PPD, total, complex post
processing) |
no |
yes |
General: Set up catalogs. Used to restrict the lookup of metadata items from sales to a specific catalog (facilitates the use of the same system for separate recording and publishing rights catalogs. Gives productive results, even when looking up metadata based on artist/title information, only. | yes |
yes |
General: internal number format
and currency |
yes |
yes |
General: ISRC country and
company code for automatic ISRC code generation |
yes |
yes |
General: Technical preferences
for statement and PDF generation |
yes |
yes |
Layout: Set up text information
and label names in two differen languages (home and english) to create
statements in any language: |
yes |
yes |
Layout: Set up company logo and
statement prefix for a single
company |
yes |
yes |
Layout: Set up company logo and statement prefix for multiple companies | opt |
opt |
Email: Settings for email
delivery for a single company |
yes |
yes |
Email: Settings for email delivery for multiple companies | opt |
opt |
Currencies: Activate system
currencies from a list of all currencies, set up WHT (witholding tax)
per country, retrieve current exchange rates |
yes |
yes |
Multi
Company Option Administer catalogs, contacts, accounts and royalties for multiple companies, issue royalty statements in the name of mutiple companies, incl. artwork, company text, company mail server |
opt | opt |
Technical Specifications And Recommendations

macOS 10.12-10.14
Windows 7-10 (pro editions).
Our apps were built with speed in mind. Nevertheless, the software has to deal with lots of data and big files. As every database-centric software, it loves a fast disc system. So here are our recommendations. They are equal for Macintosh and Windows computers:
a recent computer, not older than 4 years
a Core i3 or better processor
a minimum of 8GB of RAM
an SSD
We do not recommend using Windows 10 Home in a professional business environment, based on the history of problems with automatic updates from Microsoft. Windows 10 Pro allows the user to postpone updates to a later, safer date, when all obvious bugs are already ironed out.
Currently, we advise customers not to use Mac OS X 15 (Catalina) in production environments. We generally recommend to wait for a V3 release of every new Mac OS system.
Get a quote today and let a new royalty companion do the hard work
About Us
OFFICER Solutions was born in 1996. Since 2004 we deploy our royalty solutions to a growing international user base. Our customers are located in the Americas, Europe and Asia. We cultivate personal relationships with our user base and our customers have a direct influence on our work.