YouTube Music normalizes loudness
The question is often asked: “If YouTube reduces the volume of loud songs, why don’t I always hear it?”
Why can't I hear loudness normalization on YouTube?
The answer is simple: the person usually listens to YouTube Music and not the main video platform.
YouTube Music is an audio-only subscription platform with only a fraction of the number of users of the actual video platform. Many people are not aware that they are separate websites.
Why don't we notice volume normalization on YouTube Music?
The platform equalizes the loudness of the loudest songs, but not to the same extent as YouTube Video as it has a different distribution of loudness.
YouTube Music only reduces the loudness of the music if it exceeds the threshold of -7 LUFS exceeds. In contrast, Spotify, Amazon Music, iTunes and many other services use a threshold of
Do you want loud and punchy streaming mastering for all services?
In practice this means the following:
If you master your music with a loudness level below -7 LUFS, the loudness on YouTube Music will not be changed. This may mean that material below this level may not play as loudly as the loudest material on the site.
Of course, this also means that it doesn't make sense to go louder than -7 LUFS if the goal is just to play louder. That won't work. If the value is exceeded, this also changes Volume ratio between tracks on an album, which means some titles are discounted more than others.
Why does YouTube Music do this?
There's no way to say for sure, but I'm guessing it's a quick and easy way to avoid the problem - changing the loudness ratio between songs in an album. The YouTube platforms don't currently support "albums" - each file has a separately uploaded video associated with it, so there's no "album mode" like Apple Music and Spotify or Amazon Music. A distribution loudness of -7 LUFS will prevent users from being overwhelmed by extremely loud songs, but will also preserve the balance between individual songs in most albums.
What significance does this have?
If your goal is for your music to be played at the highest possible loudness and YouTube Music is an important platform for you, that means the loudest song on your album needs to be mastered at -7 LUFS. (Of course, not everything needs to be that loud, unless you want every song to be as loud as possible, but it's useful to know where the "top of the scale" is.)
If you are louder than this value, your music cannot be played louder - just like a loudness greater than -14 LUFS cannot be heard by the majority of users on almost all other platforms.
If your goal is to get the best sound possible for your music and you don't want to push the loudest songs to -7 LUFS, that's fine. On YouTube Music, your music may not sound as loud as the loudest material, but keep in mind that it's not just LUFS that matters to sound loud. And this platform only has a fraction of the total number of users listening to music online.
And perhaps most importantly, that can change any day. The newest AES guidelines for streaming services recommend using album normalization with the loudest songs at -14 LUFS, as TIDAL already does, and YouTube has been actively involved in developing these guidelines. It seems much easier to add "Album Mode" to YouTube Music than to try the same thing on the video platform, and I expect they'll adopt these guidelines (or something very similar) sooner rather than later - and then the -7 LUFS Distribution Loudness will be an irrelevant footnote.
So my best advice for getting great results that always sound good is still the same - don't aim for LUFS goals! Master your music at the level that sounds best to you!
If you have any further questions about streaming mastering, LUFS or audio editing for streaming services, please let us know! We are also happy to be there for you if you need professional help with your music project!
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