Loudness Penalty

dav | 2021-03-08 06:41:35.457695+00:00

Ever wondered why your track doesn't sound as good when played through a streaming service like Spotify?

I have - but I put it down to me not being very good at mixing and mastering. It turns out there's something called a loudness penalty that might also be having an effect.

Evidently streaming services normalise everything so that you don't get a loud song and then a quiet song (like when you're watching TV and you get the adds that are so much louder than the program). What happens is that the streaming services turn down the volume of loud tracks which can cause issues in playback. I've seen it said that you should master your track to be about -14 LUFS (Loudness Unit Full Scale - measures average volume of a song over time). The truth is, each streaming service has it's own algorythm for determining their loudness penalty so there is no magic LUFS number.  

I bought a plug in recently that allows me to measure how the loudness penalty would be applied to my track by each streaming service. It also allows me to preview how my track would sound on each service. To use it, simply place it as the last plug in on your track and play through your whole song. They (MeterPlugs) actually have a free service too where you can upload your track and get a loudness penalty reading and preview.  

This raises a few questions:

• should you do separate masters for each service? 

Nearly all mastering engineers are saying that this would be far too time consuming. A practical solution is to aim for a loudness that will work for most services. Some suggest doing two masters - one for streaming and one for sending to clubs and for posting to your website etc. The one you send for promotion (i.e. not for streaming services) can be mastered louder (e.g. -8 LUFS).

• how will this reduced compression/limiting affect the sound of my master?

I've seen some comment that the reduced loudness means you don't need to compress or limit your track so much. This makes it more dynamic and less 'squished' giving you a better sound. Streaky points out that while this could be a good thing for some types of music (e.g. classical, jazz, folk), it might have a negative affect on tracks in a style that need more compression, because heavy compression is actually a part of the sound.

So what's the go? Perhaps you master to style and if you need that heavily compressed sound then turn down the clip gain for sending to a streming service? I'm not sure what the answer is, if you find out - leave me a comment.

D

More info:

Loudness Penalty Plugin Demo with Ian Shepherd

Mastering Audio for Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music and Youtube