UNDERSTANDING -14 LUFS AND SPOTIFY NORMALIZATION
Getting your track’s loudness right for Spotify is critical. While Spotify normalizes playback to -14 LUFS by default, loudness normalization is optional and can be turned off by any listener in their app settings. Because professional commercial tracks on Spotify average around -8 LUFS, mastering between -14 and -8 LUFS ensures your music sounds full and competitive whether normalization is enabled or disabled.
Target -14 to -8 LUFS • Stay Competitive Everywhere
By default, Spotify enables audio normalization for all users in their app settings. When enabled, this system uses the ReplayGain algorithm (and ITU-R BS.1770 standards) to analyze the integrated LUFS of a track and adjust its playback volume to match a target of -14 LUFS.
While Spotify turns down tracks louder than -14 LUFS when normalization is active, loudness normalization is optional and can be disabled by users in their app settings. In fact, -8 LUFS is the average loudness of professional commercial tracks on Spotify! Mastering around -8 LUFS ensures your track matches the loudness of major commercial releases for listeners who turn normalization off, while still normalizing cleanly when it is on.
If your track is -18 LUFS, Spotify will attempt to turn it up. However, to prevent digital clipping, Spotify uses a limiter when applying positive gain. This limiter can alter the sound and transients of your track, which is usually undesirable.
Because Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis (for the desktop/mobile app) and AAC (for the web player) lossy encoding, they have strict True Peak recommendations.
For tracks mastered to -14 LUFS or quieter, Spotify recommends leaving a maximum True Peak level of -1 dBTP. This 1dB of headroom prevents clipping during the encoding process.
If you master your track for competitive commercial loudness (such as -10 or -8 LUFS), Spotify recommends leaving -2 dBTP of headroom. Louder tracks suffer more extreme peak increases during lossy encoding, requiring extra headroom.
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