How Loud Should You Master Your Music?

Mastering for streaming services can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be!
In this discussion, I talk about the things to watch out for when mastering to make sure that your music sounds good on all the major streaming services. Please check out my message at the end and have a chat with me in the comments, I'd love to carry on the discussion.

🎧 Here is the link to get the loudness meter I use:

With a high quality loudness meter, you don't need to second guess your mastering. You can just focus on making your music sound it's best.

0:00 - Introduction
0:40 - The Best Loudness Meter
1:20 - Loudness Discussion
2:02 - Why Does True Peak Loudness Matter?
3:30 - Why Do LUFS Matter?
6:30 - Why You Should Make A "Social Media" Master
7:30 - Full Mastering Checklist
9:53 - Important Final Note :)

🎧 Full Mastering Checklist:

1) You only need to make 1 master but I strongly advise making an additional master for social media promotion (more about that in a moment).

2) Keep the true peak loudness below -1.0dB to avoid clipping when your music is encoded to a lossy format. You can have a higher ceiling, and many professionals do (including me), but this will cause some clipping in compressed formats.

3) Almost all genres and styles of music can be compressed to between -12 and -16LUFS integrated (average) without losing impact and dimension. You can push this louder and have a higher short term loudness, but this will cause gain reduction to be applied. Louder masters can still sound punchy and exciting, and this is a case of personal preference. No one is right or wrong here!

4) Create a "social media" master with a true peak ceiling of -2.0dB. This will sound significantly better on applications such as Instagram and FaceBook which are notorious for distorted and crunchy audio!

5) Keep backups of your original mixes. You never know when you'll need to remaster them.

[OlbaidMusic]

Good insights as always. What is really an absolute true is that this topic doesn't matter much if you did not invest enough time on your composition, sound design, arrangement, etc.
Good music first, technical stuff later.

[TachyBunker]

Wow. I was really worried and didn't know what levels to master at, if we had to do different levels for each platform or.... thank you! This is a huge relief, thanks to your advice again!

[VV-nhzp]

Just what was lookin for. Great timing!🙌

[andreas]

Whenever I become too stressed or worried about my music production abilities or workflow, all it takes for me to get back on track is watching a couple of insightful videos from you. Thank you so much as always!

[flysolow]

Really appreciate the fact that you make videos on the topics that you do, a lot of your videos cover things that most channels on youtube don't and you've helped me understand a lot of things, keep doin your thing man💪

[brettmaddan]

Hey Michael, Thanks for this. I always look forward to your posts. So useful, and always interesting! You are one of the few youtubers that I always make sure to check every new video you make. Keep it coming, we really all appreaciate your knowledge, and the way that you explain things. Thanks a lot!

[nikolaykamenov]

Great advice and to-the-point as always! Love your content, Michael 🔥❤️

[sharan]

What a timing Michael!!! i was worried about the social media thing that you discussed and i had no idea why my music was sounding so bad on insta. YOU SAVED MY

[manasiangal]

What a timing for you to drop this video! I was getting extrememly confused about the loudness. Thanks for helping the common crowd so much, Michael!

[Mix.Master]

Thank you for the video. I hope that now is clear for everyone, that mastering for platforms means the peak levels, and not the RMS loudness volume. Well explained. I was arguing on that with some stubborn people, and even now, they didn't get it clear. Good work. Cheers!

[ceonationz]

Sincerely speaking, I really appreciate you a lot Micheal, your tutorials, advise and videos has made a very great impact in my growing process and I'm very sure many producer here have the same experience.
Following your footsteps I've also started my own YouTube channel, building a music production community
Thanks In the mix

[alibanmusic]

Man u don't know how much I respect ur tutorials...where were u 10 years ago when Noone didn't want to help teach me shit! Blessings from Toronto!

[cdney]

This is incredibly useful👌, thanks Michael

[harmlesscreationsofthegree]

Great vid, was curious about this topic and you delivered the answers, thanks!

[zackmartinez.]

Bro I love ur videos, you have a great sense of detail when it comes to giving info, I understand everything !

[skr]

I'm very new to mastering, and this has helped so much! You're a huge inspiration to me. You are one of the main reasons why I want to become a producer! The valuable information you give for free is so helpful, especially for beginners like me! Thanks again!

[shykall]

Every advice provide is gold, and is given in a very open minded way. Your really are one of the, if not the, kindest youtuber . The music making gentleman ;-) Because every end of year is the time of awards. I give you the gold medal of the most pleasant and interesting posts to watch. I wish you a high level, dynamic, uncompressed happyness for 2022.

[TheCelestineProph]

GREAT VIDEO. THANKS FOR THE SUGGESTIONS. I will be putting them to practical use. Cheers🥂

[nemttofficial]

Another amazing video! Your videos are so awesome. Thanks for sharing your knowledge about music.

[bitflux]

i think this is the best video on the topic in youtube, well done