Understanding Stages

Every song in Producer Dashboard has a workflow stage that tells you where it sits in your production process. At a glance, you can see which tracks are just ideas, which are being mixed, and which are ready to release. Stages are the foundation of how you track progress across your catalogue.

The Default Stages

Producer Dashboard comes with a set of default stages that map to a typical music production workflow:

Seed

The very beginning. You’ve got a melody in your head, a chord progression you jotted down, a voice memo, or a two-bar loop. It’s the raw spark of an idea that hasn’t been developed yet.

Colour: Slate grey

Writing

You’re actively developing the idea. Laying down arrangement, building out sections, experimenting with sounds. The song is taking shape but isn’t ready to record or finalise.

Colour: Blue

Recorded

The core elements have been captured. Vocals tracked, instruments recorded, main takes done. You have the raw material and now it needs to be shaped in the mix.

Colour: Orange

Mixing

The song is in the mixing phase. You’re balancing levels, applying effects, EQing, and getting the track sounding polished. This might happen in your own DAW or with a mixing engineer.

Colour: Purple

Ready to Release

Mixing is done, the master is approved, artwork is sorted. The track is complete and waiting to go live. You might be holding it for a release schedule or coordinating distribution.

Colour: Green

Published

The track is out in the world. Released on streaming platforms, sent to a client, or distributed however you planned. This stage marks the finish line.

Colour: Dark green

Archived

The song is shelved. Maybe it didn’t make the cut, maybe it’s an older track you’ve moved on from, or maybe you’re saving it for later. Archived tracks are out of your active workflow but not deleted.

Colour: Dark slate

How to Change a Track’s Stage

There are two main ways to update a stage:

From the Grid

1. Find the track in the grid
2. Click the stage badge in the stage column (the coloured label showing the current stage)
3. A dropdown appears with all available stages
4. Click the stage you want to move the track to
5. The badge updates instantly with the new colour and label

From the Activity Panel

1. Select a track in the grid to open it in the activity panel on the right
2. The stage widget shows the current stage
3. Click it to open the stage selector
4. Choose the new stage

Both methods update the track immediately. There’s no save button — the change applies right away.

Visual Colour Coding

Each stage has a distinct colour, and these colours show up everywhere:

• Grid stage badges — The small coloured labels in the stage column
• Kanban cards — Cards are grouped by stage, each column colour-coded
• Dashboard widgets — Stage breakdowns use the same colour scheme
• Sidebar indicators — When filtering by stage, the active filter uses the stage colour

The colour coding is consistent across the entire app, so once you associate a colour with a stage, you can scan any view and immediately understand the status of your tracks.

Stage Flow

Stages aren’t strictly linear — you can move a track to any stage at any time. Life isn’t always a straight line from idea to release. You might:

• Move a track from Mixing back to Writing because you want to rework the arrangement
• Jump a track from Seed directly to Recorded if you captured a great take on the spot
• Move a finished track to Archived without ever publishing it
• Bring an Archived track back to Writing when inspiration strikes months later

There’s no rule that says you have to go in order. The stages are there to reflect reality, not enforce a rigid process.

Filtering by Stage

You can filter the grid to show only tracks in a specific stage. This is useful when you want to focus:

• Show only Mixing tracks when it’s time to sit down and mix
• Show only Ready to Release tracks when planning your release schedule
• Show only Seed and Writing tracks when you want to develop ideas

Combine stage filters with project selection to get very specific views, like “all tracks in the Summer EP that are currently being mixed.”

Stages and the Dashboard

Your dashboard shows stage breakdowns and summaries. The mini kanban widget gives you a bird’s-eye view of how many tracks sit at each stage, so you can spot bottlenecks. If you’ve got 30 tracks stuck in Mixing and nothing in Ready to Release, that’s a signal to focus your mixing sessions.

Tips

• Update stages as you work, not after the fact. If you finish tracking vocals, move the track to Recorded right then. It takes two seconds and keeps your overview accurate.
• Use the Archived stage intentionally. Tracks you’re genuinely done with (but don’t want to delete) should be archived so they don’t clutter your active views.
• If the default stages don’t match your workflow, you can create Custom Workflows with your own stage names and colours.

Related

• Custom Workflows — Create your own stages beyond the defaults
• Tracking Progress — Use Kanban view and filters to monitor stage progress
• Due Dates & Deadlines — Combine stages with deadlines for complete project tracking
• Tracks Overview — Learn about the grid where you manage stages