Naming Alt Mixes and Stems: What Actually Groups Them
The short answer
Name your tracks however you want. DropCue does not require a filename format, and nothing breaks if you ignore every convention in this article.
But if you want your instrumentals, edits, TV mixes and stems to nest underneath their main mix automatically, instead of sitting in a flat list of 400 rows, there is a pattern that triggers it. Two tracks group together when they share a base name and one of them carries a suffix.
That is the whole rule. Everything below is detail.
What counts as a suffix
Any of these four shapes work, and you can mix them freely across a catalog:
| Shape | Example |
|---|---|
| Brackets | `Forces Reunited [FullMix]` |
| Parentheses | `Forces Reunited (Strings Only)` |
| Dash | `Forces Reunited - No Drums` |
| Underscore | `Forces Reunited_Underscore` |
So `Night Drive (Instrumental)`, `Night Drive - 60`, and `Night Drive_No Lead` all nest under `Night Drive`. You do not have to pick one style and stay loyal to it.
There is no controlled vocabulary of approved suffixes either. Any suffix counts, which means your own shorthand works: `(No Brass)`, `(Kalimba Out)`, `- Bed`, `_Sting`. If you have spent ten years calling something a "TV Track," keep calling it that.
What deliberately does not nest
This is the part worth knowing, because it is where a permissive system has to draw a line. These suffixes are excluded on purpose and stay as their own top-level tracks:
| Suffix | Why it stays separate |
|---|---|
| `feat.` / `ft.` / `featuring` | A featured artist is a different recording, not a version |
| `prod.` / `produced by` | A production credit, not a mix |
| `live` / `live at` | A live take is its own performance |
| `demo` | Usually a predecessor, not a sibling |
| `cover` | A different work entirely |
| `original` | Marks the primary, so it should not be filed under anything |
| `remix by` | A distinct creative work with its own splits |
| `bonus` / `deluxe` / `remaster` | Release variants, not cue versions |
| `V2` / `Version 2` | A revision of the track itself, which is often the one you pitch |
| A bare year, like `(2024)` | A date stamp, not a mix type |
That last pair matters more than it looks. If `Night Drive V2` nested under `Night Drive`, your newest and best version would be hidden one level down inside a collapsed row. Version numbers stay visible.
It is forgiving in four specific ways
Real catalogs are messy, and grouping that only works on pristine input is grouping that does not work. Four accommodations worth knowing about:
Catalog prefixes are ignored. A parent named `A Bird Without Wings` still matches a child named `OUTSDR_OM1072_A Bird Without Wings_No Drums`. Import prefixes and catalog codes, letters followed by three or more digits, get stripped before comparison. You do not have to go back and re-title a library that came in from another platform.
`STEMS -` prefixes are stripped. `STEMS - Night Drive_Synth Bass` still finds `Night Drive`, so a stem bundle delivered with that prefix lands in the right family.
Punctuation folds. `Ain't Coming Home` and `Aint Coming Home` match. So do titles that differ only in hyphens, commas, or apostrophe style, which is what saves you when one export used a curly apostrophe and another used a straight one.
Grouping is scoped by album. If you have three different songs called "Serenity" across three releases, they never collapse into each other. Titles are only compared inside the same album, and tracks with no album fall back to title-only matching.
Nothing happens without your say-so
Auto-nesting is something you run on a selection, not a background process that quietly rearranges your catalog overnight.
You pick the tracks, DropCue shows you a preview of the proposed groupings, parent by parent with its children listed, and nothing is written until you accept it. If the result is wrong, it is undoable.
That preview is the honest test of any naming scheme. Run it on 50 tracks and you will see in about four seconds whether your convention is doing what you think it is doing.
A convention worth stealing, if you do not have one
If you are starting from nothing, this holds up and it is readable by a human at a glance:
```text Night Drive Night Drive (Instrumental) Night Drive (No Drums) Night Drive (Underscore) Night Drive (60) Night Drive (30) Night Drive (Sting) STEMS - Night Drive (Drums) STEMS - Night Drive (Bass) ```
The main mix carries no suffix, so it is unambiguous which one is the parent. Everything else describes what was done to it. A supervisor scanning a share link reads this without a legend.
If you prefer `Full Mix` on the parent, that works too: `Night Drive (Full Mix)` is recognised as the parent rather than as a child, along with `[FullMix]` and a trailing `_Full Mix`.
Why this matters past tidiness
A supervisor opening a 400-track link and a supervisor opening 60 parent tracks that expand into 400 are having different experiences. The second one can actually scan your catalog.
It also changes what happens when they find something. A supervisor who likes the main mix but needs it under dialogue wants the underscore version in the same click, not an email asking whether one exists. Nesting puts the answer to "do you have this without the melody" directly under the track, where the question gets asked.
That is the real argument for a convention: not neatness, but shortening the distance between interest and a usable file.
FAQ
Do I have to name my tracks a specific way in DropCue?
No. DropCue does not require any filename format, and your catalog works normally whatever you call things. The naming pattern only matters if you want versions to nest under their main mix automatically. Two tracks group when they share a base name and one carries a suffix in brackets, parentheses, or after a dash or underscore.
What suffixes will not nest as alt mixes?
Suffixes that describe a different recording rather than a version of the same one are excluded on purpose: feat., ft., featuring, prod., produced by, remix by, live, live at, demo, cover, original, bonus, deluxe, remaster, V2, Version 2, and a bare year such as (2024). Those stay as their own top-level tracks.
Will auto-nesting rearrange my catalog without asking?
No. Auto-nesting runs on a selection you choose, and it shows a preview of every proposed grouping, each parent with its children, before anything is written. You accept it or you do not, and the result can be undone.
Does a catalog code or import prefix break the matching?
No. Prefixes made of letters followed by three or more digits are stripped before titles are compared, so a parent titled "A Bird Without Wings" still matches a child titled "OUTSDR_OM1072_A Bird Without Wings_No Drums". STEMS - prefixes are stripped too, and punctuation differences such as curly versus straight apostrophes are folded.
What happens if two different songs share a title?
Grouping is scoped by album, so three different songs called "Serenity" on three different releases never merge into one family. Only tracks with no album at all fall back to matching on title alone.
