Loudness normalization on Spotify

Audio is delivered to us at different volume levels.

We use loudness normalization to balance soft and loud songs for a more consistent listening experience.

This applies to all playback formats, including lossless audio.

Note: The web player and 3rd-party devices (like TVs or speakers) don’t use loudness normalization. Playback behavior may vary depending on your device and whether it supports compressed or lossless audio.

How we adjust loudness

We adjust tracks to -14 dB LUFS, according to the ITU 1770 standard.

Loudness normalization is applied during playback. We measure loudness levels during the upload process, but we don’t process or change your audio tracks before playback.

• We normalize an entire album at the same time, so gain compensation doesn’t change between tracks. This means the softer tracks are as soft as you intend them to be.
• We adjust individual tracks when shuffling an album or listening to tracks from multiple albums (e.g. listening to a playlist).

This normalization is applied to both compressed and lossless FLAC playback to ensure consistency.

Positive and negative gain

Positive or negative gain compensation is applied to a track while it’s playing.

• Negative gain is applied to louder masters so the loudness level is -14 dB LUFS. This lowers the volume in comparison to the master - no additional distortion occurs.
• Positive gain is applied to softer masters so the loudness level is -14 dB LUFS. We consider the headroom of the track, and leave 1 dB headroom for lossy encodings to preserve audio quality.
  Example: If a track loudness level is -20 dB LUFS, and its True Peak maximum is -5 dB FS, we only lift the track up to -16 dB LUFS.

Premium listeners can choose volume normalization levels

Premium listeners can adjust playback levels in the app settings to compensate for a noisy or quiet environment:

• Loud: -11dB LUFS
  Note: We set this level regardless of maximum True Peak. We apply a limiter to prevent distortion and clipping in soft dynamic tracks. The limiter’s set to engage at -1 dB (sample values), with a 5 ms attack time and a 100 ms decay time.
• Normal: -14dB LUFS
• Quiet: -19dB LUFS

These settings apply across all playback formats, including lossless.

Mastering tips

Loudness normalization means we don’t always play your track at the level it’s mastered.

To optimize playback across Spotify:

• Target the loudness level of your master at -14dB integrated LUFS
• Keep it below -1dB TP (True Peak) max. This is best for lossy formats (Ogg/Vorbis and AAC) and makes sure no extra distortion’s introduced in the transcoding process.
• If your master is louder than -14dB integrated LUFS, keep True Peak below -2dB to avoid extra distortion. Louder tracks are more susceptible to extra distortion when encoded for streaming.

These guidelines also apply to tracks delivered for lossless playback.

We process all delivered files internally to prepare for both compressed and lossless streaming.

You only need to send us one high-quality stereo master per track.