Spotify LUFS: how loud Spotify plays your music.

How Spotify loudness normalization works

When your distributor delivers a track, Spotify measures its integrated loudness with the ITU-R BS.1770 method, the same one the Loudmeter analyzer uses. At playback the app applies one fixed gain change, so the track plays at the level the listener has chosen. Your file isn't re-mastered. It's a volume knob Spotify turns once per track.

The result: two masters of the same song, one at −8 LUFS and one at −14, reach a Spotify listener at the same loudness. The −8 master is turned down 6 dB. What's left is whatever the limiter took from it to get there.

When someone plays a whole album, Spotify normalizes the album as one unit, so a quiet interlude stays quieter than the single next to it. On shuffle and in playlists, each track is normalized on its own.

Loud, Normal and Quiet: the three volume levels

• Normal, −14 LUFS. The default, and the level most listeners hear.
• Quiet, −19 LUFS. Everything is turned down further, so almost no track needs to be turned up.
• Loud, −11 LUFS. To get quiet tracks this loud, Spotify runs them through a limiter set at −1 dB (sample values) with a 5 ms attack and a 100 ms release. This is the one mode where Spotify changes the sound of a dynamic master.
• Off. Listeners can switch audio normalization off in the app's settings. Then every track plays at its own file level, and a louder master really is louder.

Nobody outside Spotify knows how many listeners use each mode. Plan for Normal, and make sure your master still sounds right in the other three.

Will Spotify turn a quiet master up?

Yes, in Normal and Quiet mode, but only as far as the peaks allow. Spotify won't raise a track so far that its peaks pass about −1 dB, and it doesn't add a limiter to get more. A master at −18 LUFS with a true peak of −3 dBTP can come up about 2 dB, to around −16 LUFS, and then plays about 2 LU below the tracks around it.

The number that decides this is PLR, true peak minus integrated loudness. With a −14 target and a −1 ceiling, a quiet master reaches −14 in Normal mode only if its PLR is 13 or less. The analyzer shows PLR as one of its result cards.

True peak: why Spotify asks for −1 or −2 dBTP

Most Spotify listening is lossy: Ogg Vorbis and AAC. A lossy encoder rebuilds the waveform from less data, and the rebuilt peaks land higher than the originals. A master that touches 0.0 dBFS can clip after encoding even though your DAW never showed a red light.

Spotify's published guidance is to keep true peak below −1 dBTP, and below −2 dBTP if the master is louder than −14 LUFS, because loud, dense masters pick up more distortion in transcoding. It says true peak, not sample peak: the difference is explained in true peak vs sample peak.

The analyzer measures true peak with 4× oversampling and marks every over on the waveform in red, with its time, so you can go straight to the bar that causes it.

So how loud should you master for Spotify?

Being louder than −14 costs you only what you pay yourself: Spotify turns you down and the density stays. There's no prize for hitting −14.0 exactly, either. A sensible order of work:

1. 01Master for the sound you want, with a reference track matched in loudness.
2. 02Measure the bounced file: integrated LUFS, true peak and PLR.
3. 03If it's louder than −14 LUFS, keep true peak at −2 dBTP or lower.
4. 04If it's quieter than −14 LUFS, check that PLR is 13 or less if you want Spotify to bring it all the way up.
5. 05Listen at −14: turn your master and the reference down to the same integrated level and compare. That's how most Spotify listeners will hear them.

Plenty of rap, EDM and metal is still mastered around −9 to −6 LUFS, for DJs, for radio and for listeners who switched normalization off. That's a fair choice, as long as you know that in Normal mode it plays 5 to 8 dB below the file.

Check your master against −14 LUFS

Drop the bounce into the online analyzer. It reads integrated LUFS, true peak, PLR and PSR in your browser, without uploading the file. The gap between your integrated value and −14 is the gain Spotify applies in Normal mode: a master at −9.2 LUFS is turned down about 4.8 dB. Then press play under Hear it on streaming and choose Spotify: you hear the master at that level, and can switch back to the original while it plays. Other platforms are in the targets table.

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