What "mastered for streaming" actually means

For years, mastering was an arms race. Every release was pushed a little louder than the last, because louder sounds "better" for the first few seconds. Streaming ended that race, but plenty of artists still master as if it hadn't.

Here's what actually happens to your song when it goes up on a streaming platform, and what "mastered for streaming" should mean.

Loudness normalisation, in one paragraph

Streaming platforms measure how loud each song is, then turn every song up or down so they all play back at roughly the same level. Your listener doesn't have to grab the volume between tracks. It also means that a master pushed to be as loud as possible gets turned down to match everything else.

LUFS: how loudness is measured

Platforms don't measure loudness by peak level. They use LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale), which tracks how loud a song feels over its whole length, weighted towards how human hearing works.

The approximate playback targets:

So if you master a song to −8 LUFS, Spotify plays it about 6 dB quieter. A song mastered to −14 plays back as is.

These targets change from time to time, and listeners can switch normalisation off, so treat them as a guide, not a rule.

Why "as loud as possible" backfires

Making a master very loud means squeezing its dynamics with heavy limiting: the drums lose their punch, transients get rounded off, and the chorus can't lift above the verse because everything is already at the ceiling.

On a platform that normalises, that master gets turned down to the same level as a more dynamic one. Now it's no louder, but it's still squashed. Side by side, the dynamic master usually sounds bigger and more alive.

So how loud should a master be?

There's no single right number. It depends on the genre and the song. A sensible approach:

• Master for the song, not for a number. A dense EDM track and a quiet acoustic ballad shouldn't land at the same loudness.
• Check the integrated loudness with a LUFS meter. Many modern pop, hip-hop and rock masters sit somewhere between −8 and −12 LUFS; acoustic and jazz often quieter. Going much louder than your genre gains nothing on streaming.
• Watch true peak. Leave at least −1 dBTP (true peak) of headroom. When platforms convert your WAV to compressed formats, peaks can overshoot and distort. Very loud masters benefit from a little more headroom.
• Listen on everything. Studio monitors, earbuds, a phone speaker, a car. A good master holds together on all of them.

What a mastering engineer actually does

Loudness is only one part of it. Mastering also means:

• Final EQ to balance the overall tone
• Gentle compression to glue the mix together
• Making every track on an EP or album feel like part of one record: consistent level and tone, sensible gaps and fades
• Delivering the right files: a high-resolution WAV for distribution, and other versions as needed

It also brings a fresh pair of ears, in an accurate room, to a mix you've heard a thousand times.

The short version

"Mastered for streaming" means a master that sounds great at the level the platform will actually play it: dynamic enough to breathe, with enough true-peak headroom to survive conversion, and consistent with the rest of the release.

At Ashlar Audio we master in an acoustically treated room in Anna Nagar, Chennai, in person or remotely. If you'd rather learn to do it yourself, mastering and loudness standards are part of Module 05 of the Core Audio Programme.