Loudness Normalization in Music-Streaming Services

As an artist/composer, who plans to start posting content on bigger music-streaming services, it's important that I, as well as other self-produced artists, understand loudness standards before uploading to platforms, to protect the quality of our music. Every music-streaming service has their own loudness standards that artists need to abide by to ensure that the quality of tracks remains the same as when they were exported. In this post, I'll be blogging about the importance of following loudness standard guidelines, the loudness standards of popular music-streaming services as well as some tips from other sources on how to go about following these standards.

What is Loudness/Audio Normalization?

Loudness Normalization is "the automatic process of adjusting the perceived loudness of all the songs on the service to sound approximately the same as you listen from track to track." (Cornell, 2017). This is used by most music-streaming services to ensure a balanced listening experience across many playlists and albums, (Schwabe, 2017). The levels of tracks is measured by loudness measurement called LUFS which stands for Loudness Units (relative to) Full Scale, and every music-streaming platform has their own target level (some platforms such as Soundcloud, Bandcamp ad also CD formats don't have loudness normalization standards). Here are the target LUFS levels of some popular music-streaming services:

Table by Mastering The Mix

If your song is mastered louder than a target LUFS level of any particular platform, the platform's algorithm will automatically reduce the level of the song. Mastering your track louder than the target level reduces the dynamic range and the punch of your track, which is why it's recommended to always master to the loudness target. It's important that all self-produced artists understand the target loudness levels of these popular platforms so then their music won't get effected.

I found another infographic of how popular music-streaming services manage loudness based on their own loudness standards, which I thought was pretty interesting.

Infograph from Production Advice

Here are a few guidelines/tips from some sources on how to prepare your tracks to suit the target levels of any music-streaming service that has loudness normalization standards.

- When mastering, leave at least -1dBTP of headroom and about -2dBTP for louder songs as it allows for optimising in lossy formats and to reduce the chance of clipping during transcoding. (Mastering the Mix, 2016)

- "Don't pursue absolute loudness maximisation, instead pursue conscious loudness targeting" (Cornell, 2017)

- Always Measure Loudness using a LUFS Metre: A LUFS metre will allow to numerically metre your track and to help adjust your track's dynamic range accordingly. (Cornell, 2017)

- "In all services except Spotify, content that measures lower than target loudness is not gained up. So for people working with very dynamic classical music or film soundtracks those big dynamic movements will not be lost on most streaming platforms." (Cornell, 2017)

Like my previous blog post about contracts, I hope to see more resources available for self-produced artists like myself on these kinds of topics so that we'll become more aware of how to properly master and prepare our tracks for music-streaming services. I can see how some upcoming artists can become quite confused when their tracks aren't as pumping on Spotify as it was in their studios. I'm glad to have learnt about loudness levels in my lectures as well as through my own independent research as now I'm better equipped to be able to deliver better quality tracks for my audience.

Bibliography

Cornell, K. (2017). Music Streaming Platforms & Mastering - 3 Guiding Concepts. Retrieved from https://www.tunecore.com/blog/2017/03/music-streaming-platforms-mastering-3-guiding-concepts.html

Mastering The Mix. (2016). Mastering audio for Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify and Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/76296773-mastering-audio-for-soundcloud-itunes-spotify-and-youtube

Schwabe, R. (2017). Music Streaming & Loudness Normalization. Retrieved from http://www.ryanschwabe.com/blog/loud