are you scared that you might be mastering to the wrong level for your genre? Curious about the levels of different music on Spotify? I'm about to share an incredibly simple method not widely known using any door that will reveal everybody's loudness numbers instantly. Let me show you how. I'm a pro mastering engineer for some of the world's leading artists, so it's important that I know what level everybody is mastering to. But with Spotify saying it should be mastered to -4 LFS, and on the flip side of that, you have artists like Skrillex mastering to around minus 4 LFS, what is right then for the genre that I'm mastering for? So what I'm about to show you is how I found out the true loudness levels of every track that I play on Spotify, and by the end of this video, you'll also know how loud to master your tracks for the genre that you're in so that you stand up to your competition. But before we get into that, I wanted to mention

that I've got a live mastering training happening on Monday. If you want to be part of that, if you want to watch that and ask me questions at the end, there is a link in the description below. So back to loudness. Firstly, what we need to do to make the whole of this system work is download a free bit of software. If you're on a Mac, it's called Soundflower, and if you're on a PC, it's called Jack Audio Connection Kit. There are links to these in the description below. Because I'm on a Mac, I'm going with Soundflower. These bits of software just allow you to route Spotify to an input on your DAW. Once you have this installed, you need to create a multi-output device. I've created one here where you select my output, which is the Lynx Hilo in my case, and I also want to then select the Soundflower 2 Channel. I then named this Spotify. This means we'll have one output selected, but it'll be playing to two outputs. Now open a fresh session in your

door of choice. I'm using logic, so in my door settings, I go to audio so I can select the inputs and outputs. The output can be whatever my output is normally is, so I can hear it on my speakers, and then the input is going to be Soundflower 2 Channel. Now on this channel, I'm going to select the inputs one and two. Make sure you mute your stereo out so that we're not listening to the output twice. Select a meter plugin that will show you the LUFS of this channel. So in here, I've got a level meter, a stereo level meter, and then I'm going to select it so that it shows me the true peak and RMS. Then make sure you have the input monitor selected on the channel. Now we need to head over to Spotify, but before pressing play, go to settings on Spotify and find the setting normalize. Normalize volume. We want this turned off. We also want the audio adjust quality turned off, and we want these streaming qualities to be turned eared as high as you can possibly get them.

this will now play the track at a full mastered level when it was uploaded to Spotify. Without Spotify doing any kind of level adjustments, now press play and go back to your door. You'll then see the levels from Spotify displayed on your meter plugin. I think you're going to be amazed when you see what levels people are uploading to Spotify, especially all the true Peaks that are displayed. So I'm just going to show you a couple of examples now. I won't be playing the audio because obviously I'll get it done for copyright, but this one, for example, Taylor Swift Cru summer. Let's play that, stick it into the middle, go back to our door, and we can see. If I click this, I'm using RMS, it's very similar to LUFS, so don't let that fool you. So here we are. I've got an RMS of around -9.38, and then we've got the true Peaks that are literally going over by 2.3. So you can see that's quite a consistently loud level compared to

Theus 14, let's check out another track. Let's go to Arctic Monkeys, I Want to Be Yours. Let's go towards the end where it's probably got a little bit more level. Going back to logic, and we can see that that is actually going to around -9 -10, and the true Peaks are being held there. So that's quite an uh interesting fact that they're not letting that go with true Peaks. So you can see how exciting this is where you can see the levels that everyone is mastering to. I've never seen anybody show this on YouTube before, so make sure you save this video because I'm sure you'll want to come back to it so that you can set it up on your system next time that you're mastering. If you found this really helpful, then don't forget I've got my mastering live training happening on Monday. There is a link in the description. Come along, love to see you there. You can ask me some questions after I've taught you loads of stuff about mastering, and obviously don't

forget to like and subscribe to the channel. This next video has me showing you how to do different chaining pairs. It's really handy to know when you're mixing.

Spotify Levels Finally Revealed

Spotify Levels Finally Revealed

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