Let’s say I master a song to -10 LUFS integrated. They do also have a limiter in place, but it must be understood that it’s not there to do the normalising, it’s there to prevent overs when changing the gain going in. No different to pulling the fader down on a track. When a master gets distributed to their platform, Spotify analyses the relative loudness of the song and simply turns it up or down to match their target playback level using simple, non-destructive gain changes.

They will tell you that you must master to that level for the best possible result.Īnd worse still, it completely defeats the purpose of the platforms implementing loudness management in the first place! Many will have you believe that this means that you have to match it. Loudness management works to remedy this. One of the number one complaints from users is inconsistencies in volume. The reason they are doing this is for user experience.

Meaning they reduced their target level by 3dB / 3LU. Spotify once reduced their playback level from -11 LUFS integrated to -14. The major platforms have been doing this for a while now. It was primarily designed for broadcast to enable loudness normalisation, but more and more we are seeing this unit being used in music to measure relative loudness between songs and albums. LUFS stands for Loudness Units Relative To Full Scale.

Unlock a bundle of free resources to help you create and release your music This happens when using either their desktop or mobile apps. Meaning they have processes in place to make sure that all music is played at roughly the same loudness. Just because Spotify normalises to -14 LUFS, doesn’t mean you have to!Īs you may have heard, Spotify normalises to -14 LUFS.

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