Streaming settings
Modern music formats have changed attitudes towards loudness. Several years ago, average levels were being pushed further and further, to the detriment of dynamics and music in general. Since then, music consumption trends have swayed more and more towards streaming services, which have brought loudness battles to a halt. Why? Well, all major streaming platforms now advise a standard LUFS level for uploads, and also implement some kind of automatic normalisation process to make all music match these values. For example, Spotify and Tidal’s standard is approximately -14LUFS: upload a -10LUFS song to one of those, and it’ll be reduced by 4LUFS to hit that ceiling. This negates the benefit of making your premaster as loud as possible, as a peaklimited -10LUFS song turned down will sound much less dynamic than a track mastered to the target level from the start. Other streaming services have their own standards: YouTube advise -13LUFS for their platform, while Apple Music say roughly -16LUFS. So when mastering, you absolutely need to know where your music will ultimately end up being played back. If you’re aiming for all formats, consider creating several versions of your master, each tailored to the output destination in question. Neither Beatport nor Soundcloud feature the said autonormalisation, so first create your ‘loudest’ master (perhaps around -9LUFS as a rough starting point) for DJ play and online download portals, then back off the master limiting and bounce some more dynamic versions for Spotify, YouTube, etc.