Why Is My Album Quiet On Spotify?

Thanks so much for helping, always great to hear your perspective on things, especially great to hear so on my own music! The comment section is full of interesting observations as always too!!

The difference between someone with a lifetime of experience and a mid 20s YT content creator expert with no experience beyond going to audio college but who considers themselves an expert.

sometimes i’m in the red yet lufs loudness isn’t hitting even -14, which i figure isn’t loud enough for streaming (assuming bringing level up might sound bad?). vid is still vague on sensible non loud levels, if normalization is -14...

I get what you are saying Dan, but many people listen to music on headphones thru their phone.
When you listen that way there is a celling for how loud you can turn up the music because of the phone.
So from that point of view, you do wanna get your song loud on spotify

Do you still using Vegas Pro?

On my streaming platform of choice I play playlists, on shuffle mainly. I might get Dan’s songs, or songs from any number of other artists.

In this respect track loudness, and specifically consistency from one track to the next IS important. If any artists’ tracks make me reach for the volume controls every time they come on, and again when the next track comes on, we’ll, that’s one way to alienate a listener.

Well said 👏👏

Lovely said.

The freedom being an artists that doesn't have to worry about competing on commercial platforms is absolutely the best part about being unsuccessful. The small amount of people that listen to my music gets to hear it, good or bad, exactly how I wanted it to sound and not influenced by any other factors.
And in todays music business the financial difference between myself and a lot of commercial artists is basically nil🤣

There are counterintuitive ways to make your track louder on streaming services. You can’t limit in the same way you would for CD. Plenty of resources available to help with this.

Dan is an idealist, and not a realist. It would be a wonderful world in which listeners tuned in primarily for the mix quality and were only too happy to ride the volume knob throughout the duration of a song. Presumably then he doesn’t use any volume automation on his mixes; if it’s a great guitar solo they’ll just turn it up don’t worry! Right Dan?

Thank you!!!

that's perfect

This video is so much better and clearer BECAUSE there is no audio and we only get to focus on the visual feedback

I'm not trying to be smart, but why is this news to people these days still? The more you clip the more distortion so it will be louder but actually sound worse. Maybe not worse in the very short run but listen to it long enough and your ears will get annoyed. We have people moving to vinyl to restore something organic that they feel is missing. What is missing are all those waveforms that have been clipped because someone wants it to be mastered "louder". It's not louder it's more distorted. The listener not the engineer determines the final loudness.

So we have people, embracing a format (vinyl) with more distortion to somehow cover up or make up for everything that is being clipped. This is backwards on so many levels.

The problem with wave clipping distortion is that most people are not even really aware of it. Their ears over time just get annoyed and they stop listening. Sorry if I am just repeating the obvious. If so, move along nothing to see hear.

i think it's definitely a genre thing. some genres are designed to be very loud, while others need to be quieter. i tired out the clip to zero approach on baphpometrix's channel and i found it helped my mixing decisions, however I'm not trying too achieve the insane loudness of -6--7 lufs that that method was designed for. it helped uncover flaws in my mix that i wouldn't of otherwise heard until the final master phase which is very helpful in that regard.

Dan! Congratulations! Out of all of my favorite channels, you are the very first one whom I am sending a bit of my hard-earned cash towards with a membership. I had to plan this out, because now that the ball is rolling downhill, I need to make sure I don't start sponsoring 30 channels, but eventually I plan to upgrade... Keep the great work coming, please. I know it's few and far between, but when you get into a subject or product, it's very much worth it.

I have a rather important question (and possibly a video request): Not long ago, Mr. I-won't-even-try-to-spell-it-because-I-just-learned-how-to-pronounce-it at White Sea Studios... Yeetzuh (I'm from Alabama, I have to mock the culture to keep from crying) shoved a comment in sideways about Plugin Doctor. He said that he was under the impression that it's not nearly as accurate and telling as we all think it is. That made me immediately think of what you'd have to say about it, and I wondered if that knock has been brought to your attention. I respect Yahtzee almost as much as you, so I can't really take that statement with a grain of salt. Care to retort? Thanks for all you do!

I love how you talk about something many many producers forget and its so important: an artistic and esthetic (like phiosophical discipline) point of view.

As a producer, you have no idea how satisfying it is to hear you say that about loudness. Musicality has absolutely no correlation to loudness

damn... truth hurts

Yeah, you try and explain that to a client. At the end of the day if your track isn’t as loud as everyone else’s then that is perceived to be a big problem. I’m not talking the loudness wars of the 90s, but more keeping it relative to everything else on Spotify. No amount of “well just turn up the volume knob” will cut it with a fee-paying client. Get the mix sorted and constantly compare to reference tracks already on Spotify/iTunes/Amazon etc.

very well put, couldn't agree more. this has always been my argument - we're all humans who can figure out how a volume knob works so we can each listen at the level that suits us. the loudness wars were stupid and unnecessary to begin with and over-compression and limiting has ruined many otherwise great productions. it really is time to move on from this silliness. just make it sound good

Because loudness isn’t about limiting. It’s about good compression. Harmonic content. Good eq curve. Production decisions and arrangement.

Also, with cheap speakers, headphones or cellphone speakers those "harsh" frequencies really can be a problem. My 2 cents.

We made at work (speaker manufacturer) raw comparison between streaming platforms and turners out that Spotify is really lacking loudness, but even more important the quality changes into "shit" when we get the loudness matching. Don't know what they're doing there, but if you want to have 'that musical moment' try something else than previously mentioned platform... For casual listening and background noise, it's ok!

You just set me free, thank you man 😭👍🏼

As always, just try to sound better. Stop worrying about some number anywhere. Nice to see you again Dan.

Agree 100%.
Funny enough the only I mix crazy loud are demos, only place where loudness war still makes sense probably

What an excellent message! Hats off!

Spotify has an auto loudness feature so that everything is volume matched. Would it still sound quiet?

While I agree with the core message of the video, I don't agree that loudness will "take care of itself". Yes, streaming services are going to normalise your mix to -14 LUFS, but there's different ways to get that result, and they sound different, so you ought to have a say in how to get there.



Due to the limiting, the mix shown has lost a lot of transient information, which plays an important role in loudness perception (I think that's backed up by research but take it with a grain of salt). If the inevitable normalisation is kept in mind while mixing/mastering, then you could hit that number while maintaining dynamic range, so you get a louder sounding mix.

I think 'I Won't Freeze' is a good example of this: the percussion at the end of the track doesn't slice through as much as I would like - there's just not enough volume difference between each hit and the background levels, and it gets somewhat lost in the mix. Contrast to the percussion in a track like 'Screening', by Mr. Bill. While obviously a different style, it meters about the same -14 LUFS, and still sounds smooth (to my ears), but with more dynamic range.



I also disagree with Dan's point that nobody listens quieter than they want to. If I'm listening while washing the dishes for example, I'm not going to stop and adjust the volume - I would either need to clean my hands, or get grease on my gear, so I just won't bother. Same goes for when I'm wearing gloves, or working in the garden, or riding a motorbike, and so on. I set the volume to the level that sounds good for most tracks, which is pretty consistent thanks to normalisation, so when a quiet track comes along, I simply enjoy it a little bit less.

It's small, but it might be the difference between checking out their other releases or not. This is probably even more true for the listeners who skip tracks in the first 10 seconds if they don't immediately love it. The loudness wars happened for a reason: it sounds good. There's something to be learned from that.

And yeah, the end user's devices do have volume controls, but that's not a perfect solution. An extreme example is that you could export at -80dBFS, and it will get turned way up by the platform or the user, but since you're going to be approaching the noise floor of a 16 bit file it's going to be a pretty poor sounding result. Also, adding gain isn't always going to be as clean and linear as in the 64 bit float signal path of a DAW.



So I do think loudness matters, and you should try master to the specs appropriate for the medium. Just like you need to be considerate about low end causing the needle to skip on vinyl, you should be deliberate about how normalisation will affect your track for streaming.

But none of this is relevant if it compromises the sound that you want - which is of course Dan's point. Nobody is mastering orchestral recordings like this, and that's fine, it suits the genre. Sometimes you want a super low & clean sub bass, which just doesn't translate to a phone or laptop, but who cares? All choices are a compromise.

For the record though, I liked the album (particularly the vocal production and low end), and it was plently loud enough for me. Favourite tracks were BREAK & Closing Statement.

Well the volume knob is kind of unreachable if you are for example using airpods in the gym while working out. I would like though all songs to be proprely normalized by algorithm to an equal loudness level but I haven't found a good one. The Spotify has this option but it doesn't work well, it still makes some songs significantly louder than others though it helps a little bit.

wanting to make the song as loud as possible aside, isn't part of the "goal" for the listener to not have to constantly change the volume from song to song? or at the very least, not have our own song being much louder or quieter than the rest? (sure this is inevitable, if one goes from EDM to 50s jazz, but generally speaking)
i'm not saying that we should mix songs any differently, just to accommodate for this, but i definitely thought that this is in part what a mastering engineer would do? to try to make it so that the our records can stand side by side to similar songs, mainly in terms of loudness

Dan you're a literal god among us. Thank you for your knowledge!

<3

IMHO, and not advocating for LOUD IS BETTER, but I'm not sure about "Their volume knob for your album is where they want it to be..." because nowadays we listen to so much more music than before, song after song, in an endless stream of songs... and we don't change the volume for each song... so are we in a "volume knob"-less listening experience, where apparent loudness matters? Maybe it has always been like this I'm thinking radio, public spaces, other common listening situations... for the majority of people.... is anything that is not an 'album focused' listening a "volume knob"-less experience?....

The voice of reason, and just good plain sense. Lacking elsewhere, I know I can always find a healthy spoonful here, and it all feels better once again.

I needed this. Thanks Dan.

Every single person who ever mixes, records, performs or loves music should take this to heart.

Yeeees YOU listen on tidal, sure! how did I know that before!

hm, i see the LIKe button but where did that LOVE button go? <3

I'm afraid the "everyone has a volume control" point doesnt quite work on the largest listener base nowadays : Mobile phone users listening on some sort of airpod equivalent.
These devices are easily maxed out and I find most people I ask listen at 100% phone volume if the normalization is turned on. And even that sometimes is a bit lower than desired especially if they live in a busy city with lots of street/traffic noise.
When they turn off the volume normalization, they can take the volume down to 80% or so on the phone and increase it if needed. Louder records allow the listener to have headroom on a limited power device such as a phone and airpods. You still have the option to make it louder and quieter. With -14 lufs you're maxed out and have nowhere to go.
For people who listen to music while going about their business outside, -14 lufs is a low target. Spotify has a "loud" setting that is somewhat better, but anyone who I showed the setting turned it off for good.

Integrated loudness can be "duped" by clever arrangement, but I find that the best results come from not integrated targets - but momentary loudness measurements.
Meaning if you master your song so that the loudest part (say last chorus) is sitting at the same level as tracks in the same genre, you're good.
Even if you master your last chorus to -6 lufs, you still end up around -10 lufs of integrated loudness for a typical intro-verse-chorus type song that has the usual tension changes between sections. These tracks normalize quite well and don't sound weaker, when compared to other releases.

The way to induce them to play it louder would be for the song to start quieter and slowly ramp up. How best would one achieve this (after the composition/mixing stage)? Automating a slow push on the limiter when mastering?

Thank you!

It's amazing. Dan, being absent for some time, returns for a video on a (for me) trivial topic and still manage it to drop one or two things that switch on the light bulb. Not that I wouldn't have known these things before but Dan brings back forgotten things so effortlessly to my awareness that it has something of an old wise man on the top of a stormy mountain. "Noone listens to music any louder than they want to", for instance. Screaming loud masters, do you listen?

The thing is that if you master at -14lufs it will be too quiet next to classic tracks, even with the normalization turned on...Not so long ago I remixed one EP I did and uploaded it to Spotify, the target level I aimed I believe was -11 lufs, Loudness Penalty at -3, the thing was that one day I was listening to Spotify randomly and I thought "Hey let's see how my track compares to this" and it was incredibly frustrating to notice my track sounded quieter and I had to turn the volume up even with the normalization turned on...In my opinion people who listen to playlists won't take the bother to be changing the volume all the time...The solution for me it to choose a classic album or song you like how it sounds and try to match that loudness because if you grew up in the 90's, early 2000's your music will sound quieter than anything mastered for CD and if you make a style you would like to fit in with those classic songs you cannot be so much quieter...I"m not talking about super squashing the thing but make it loud enough so you can be in the ballpark with this other classic tracks, if not your track will sound smaller, weaker and boring next to those classics and it's super depressing...On top of that if you listen to music with a USB stick in the car you will need to make it loud if you don't want to be super quiet next to all those classics in the road...

Hearing louder music does fool us into thinking it sounds better, so when a track appears in a playlist and it's comparitively quiter, that impression is lost. Your point does stand though, but in isolation or in an album setting. Both of which aren't very common.