Benchmark your master's loudness, punch, width and tone against commercial releases.
Loudness per ITU-R BS.1770-4 / EBU R128 (K-weighting, gated), true peak by 4x oversampling. "Loudest 20%" = 3 s windows at or above the 80th percentile of short-term loudness. Spectrum bands are relative to total energy so they compare shape, not level. Hover a term for its definition.
Share of measurements inside the benchmark spread, weighted towards chorus loudness and density.
Sorted by severity. Every finding that has a fix states it.
There is no single number. Every streaming platform turns loud masters down to its own playback target, so mastering to -14 LUFS does not make a track play louder on Spotify than a -8 LUFS master; both land at -14. What survives normalisation is density, tonal balance and the level of the choruses relative to the rest of the track. Competitive releases are mastered well above the platform targets for that reason.
This LUFS meter measures integrated loudness per ITU-R BS.1770-4, then compares it, and the loudness of the loudest 20% of the track, with a benchmark of commercially released masters. "Matching" means within one standard deviation of the benchmark average. That is the number to master to: where competitive releases in your lane actually sit, not the platform target.
Playback normalisation targets as of 2026. The per-track platform table in every report applies these to your master and to the benchmark average, so you can see the gain each service will apply.
| Platform | Playback target | What happens to a louder master | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spotify | -14 LUFS | Turned down to the target (default "Normal" setting). Quieter tracks are turned up, within 1 dB of true-peak headroom. | Published by Spotify. Loud setting -11, Quiet -19. Keep true peak under -2 dBTP if the master is louder than -14. |
| Apple Music | -16 LUFS | Turned down when Sound Check is on (default on most devices). Album-aware. | Reported playback level; Apple publishes no LUFS figure. |
| YouTube | -14 LUFS | Turned down. Quieter tracks are not turned up. | Reported, also applies to YouTube Music. |
| Amazon Music | -14 LUFS | Turned down to the target when normalisation is on (default). | Reported. Commonly paired with a -2 dBTP ceiling. |
| Tidal | -14 LUFS | Turned down, album-aware, so interludes keep their level relative to the singles. | Reported. |
| Deezer | -15 LUFS | Turned down to the target. | Reported, one unit quieter than the -14 group. |
| SoundCloud | – | Historically played the file at its uploaded level. Current policy is not reliably documented. | No published target. |
Spotify is the only service that publishes its target. The other figures are the playback levels widely measured and reported by mastering engineers and may change without notice.
-1 dBTP is the common recommendation: lossy encoders (Ogg Vorbis, AAC, MP3) overshoot the source peaks on decode, and a ceiling of -1 dBTP keeps those overshoots below full scale. Spotify asks for -2 dBTP when the master is louder than -14 LUFS, because louder material distorts more in transcoding. -0.3 dBTP is workable if you accept some overs; many competitive masters have them and treat it as a trade-off for level. The report measures true peak with 4x oversampling and flags overs as a warning, not an error.
Integrated LUFS averages the whole track, intros and breakdowns included. Two tracks with the same integrated loudness can have choruses several dB apart. Platforms normalise on the whole track; listeners compare choruses. So the report measures both, and weights the chorus numbers higher.
The loudest 20% is every 3 second window at or above the 80th percentile of short-term loudness. Choruses matching while the whole track is behind means the gap is arrangement, not mastering.
Every platform pulls both to its target. What is left is density and tone, not level. "Limited" means the platform would have to raise your track above its true-peak ceiling.
The benchmark is a set of commercially released, competitively mastered tracks measured with exactly the same analysis as your upload: loudness per ITU-R BS.1770-4 and EBU R128, true peak by 4x oversampling, PSR and crest factor for density, side/mid energy for width, spectral tilt and seven band levels for tone. Every measurement is compared with the benchmark average and spread, for the whole track and for the loudest 20%. Your audio is decoded and measured in the browser; only the measured numbers are sent for comparison, and the benchmark statistics never leave the server.
No. Decoding and measurement happen in your browser. The benchmark comparison sends only the measured numbers (a few kilobytes), never the audio, and the benchmark statistics themselves never leave the server.
WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3 and AAC/M4A, mono or stereo, at any sample rate. Use the lossless export you would send to a distributor: lossy encoding changes the true peak reading.
There is no single number. Spotify normalises to -14 LUFS, Apple Music to -16, YouTube and Amazon to -14, and all of them turn loud tracks down. Competitive releases are mastered well above those targets because density and tone survive normalisation and level does not. The benchmark shows where competitive releases actually sit, for the chorus and for the whole track.
Integrated loudness averages the whole track, intros and breakdowns included. Two tracks with the same integrated loudness can have choruses several dB apart. The loudest 20% (3 second windows at or above the 80th percentile of short-term loudness) isolates the sections a listener compares when your chorus follows someone else's in a playlist.
A set of commercially released, competitively mastered tracks measured with exactly the same analysis. Every metric is compared with the benchmark average and spread. "Matching" or "in range" means within one standard deviation of the average.
Lossy encoders overshoot the source peaks on decode, so -1 dBTP is the common recommendation and -0.3 dBTP is fine if you accept some overs. The report flags overs as a warning, not an error: many competitive masters have them and treat it as a trade-off for level.
Drop them one after the other. Each report replaces the previous one, so note the score, the gauges and the findings you care about before dropping the next file.
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