Before you upload a track, there's one number worth checking: its LUFS, or integrated loudness. Get it wrong and the platform quietly turns your music up or down — sometimes squashing the punch you worked hard for. Here's the short answer, why it matters, and how to hit the right target.
LUFS (Loudness Units Full Scale) measures how loud a track feels to a listener, averaged across the whole song — not just its peak level. Every major platform normalizes loudness to a target so listeners don't keep reaching for the volume knob between songs. If your track is louder than the target, it gets turned down; if it's quieter, it gets turned up. Knowing your LUFS tells you exactly how a platform will treat your master before you upload it.
Streaming has converged enough that a single master works almost everywhere. Here's where the main platforms sit:
| Platform | Integrated target |
|---|---|
| Spotify | −14 LUFS |
| YouTube | −14 LUFS |
| Apple Music | −16 LUFS |
| Amazon Music | −14 LUFS |
| Tidal | −14 LUFS |
| Club / CD master (indicative) | −9 LUFS |
Measure before you upload and you'll know exactly how much gain the platform will apply — no nasty surprise when your release sounds quieter or more squashed than you intended.
A master that peaks above −1 dBTP can distort once it's encoded to MP3 or AAC. Checking the true peak — not just the sample peak — keeps your track clean on lossy playback.
Loudness range (LRA) tells you how much your track breathes. Too little and it sounds fatiguing; checking it helps you keep transients and space that survive normalization and sound bigger.
Once you know where you stand, you can rebuild the file at the exact target loudness with a safe true-peak ceiling — no need to re-export from your DAW just to hit −14.
Spotify normalizes to −14 LUFS integrated. Master around −14 LUFS and Spotify plays your track essentially untouched. Go much louder and Spotify turns you down, costing you dynamic range for no extra loudness. Keep your true peak at −1 dBTP or lower to avoid clipping on lossy playback.
No. The streaming landscape has converged: −14 LUFS covers Spotify, YouTube, Tidal and Amazon, and Apple Music at −16 only applies gentle extra normalization. One well-made master at around −14 LUFS, with a safe true-peak ceiling, plays well everywhere.
Not anymore. Since platforms normalize loudness, a master crushed to −8 LUFS just gets turned down to match the target — and arrives sounding flatter than a track mastered to the right level with its dynamics intact. The goal in 2026 is the right level, not the loudest.