If your song sounds quieter on streaming platforms, it's likely due to loudness normalization — a standard process used by services like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and TIDAL to ensure a consistent listening experience across all tracks.
Each platform targets a specific loudness level, measured in LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale). If your track is louder than the platform’s target, it will be turned down. If it’s quieter, it may be left as-is or slightly boosted, but not to the point of introducing distortion or clipping.
While loudness targets can vary slightly depending on the platform, we recommend ensuring that your music does not exceed -14 LUFS. This is the target used by Spotify, and it’s a safe rule to follow for music platforms generally.
If your music is mastered significantly louder than that, the platform will reduce its volume, which can make it sound quieter than expected — especially next to tracks mastered closer to the recommended levels.
You can measure the LUFS value of your masters using a LUFS meter plugin.
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