LUFS Loudness Targets for Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube

If you are mastering music for digital distribution, LUFS is the single most important measurement you need to understand. Every major streaming platform uses loudness normalization to ensure listeners do not have to reach for the volume knob between tracks. This guide is part of our mastering and delivery hub, and it gives you every target number you need along with the reasoning behind each one.

For decades, the music industry fought a loudness war. Engineers pushed masters hotter and hotter, sacrificing dynamic range to sound louder on the radio. Streaming normalization ended that war. When every track is turned to the same perceived volume, the only thing a hyper-loud master achieves is less dynamic range and more listener fatigue. The smartest move is to master to the target and let your dynamics breathe.

What Is LUFS and How Does It Work?

LUFS stands for Loudness Units Full Scale. It is defined by the ITU-R BS.1770 standard and measures perceived loudness rather than simple peak amplitude. A sine wave and a snare hit can have the same peak level but sound wildly different in volume. LUFS accounts for the frequency weighting of human hearing (we are more sensitive to midrange frequencies) and the duration of the signal.

There are three LUFS measurements you will encounter:

• Integrated LUFS: The average loudness of the entire track from start to finish. This is the number streaming platforms use for normalization. When someone says "Spotify targets -14 LUFS," they mean integrated LUFS.
• Short-term LUFS: Measured over a sliding 3-second window. Useful for monitoring loudness variation between sections like verses and choruses. A short-term range of 6 to 10 LU is typical for pop and rock music.
• Momentary LUFS: Measured over a sliding 400-millisecond window. This catches transient peaks in perceived loudness. It is less useful for mastering decisions but helpful for identifying sudden loudness spikes.

Most metering plugins display all three simultaneously. For mastering, focus primarily on integrated LUFS and true peak. The short-term reading is useful as a sanity check to make sure no section of your track is dramatically louder or quieter than the rest.

Platform-by-Platform Loudness Targets

Below is a reference table of the current normalization targets for every major streaming platform. These numbers can change when platforms update their algorithms, so verify against official documentation before a major release.

The practical takeaway: if you are distributing to all major platforms, mastering to -14 LUFS integrated with a true peak ceiling of -1 dBTP is the safest universal target. Apple Music will turn you down an additional 2 dB, but the result is usually transparent and preserves your dynamics.

True Peak: The Ceiling That Actually Matters

Sample peak and true peak are not the same thing. Your DAW meter shows sample peaks, which are the highest amplitude values at each discrete sample point. But when that digital signal is reconstructed into an analog waveform (or transcoded to AAC or Ogg Vorbis), the actual peak can exceed the sample peak due to inter-sample peaks. This is especially common with heavily limited material.

If your true peak hits 0 dBTP, lossy codecs will clip during encoding and introduce audible distortion. This is why every platform recommends a true peak ceiling of -1 dBTP, and Amazon is more conservative at -2 dBTP. Most mastering limiters have a true peak mode that oversamples the signal and catches these inter-sample peaks before they cause problems.

Always enable the true peak limiter in your mastering signal chain and verify with a true peak meter after your final bounce. A dedicated metering plugin like LEVELS, Youlean Loudness Meter, or the meters built into your DAW's master section will show both integrated LUFS and true peak simultaneously.

Dynamic Range and Why Louder Is Not Better

When Spotify normalizes your track to -14 LUFS, a master that was pushed to -8 LUFS and a master at -14 LUFS will play back at the same perceived volume. The difference is that the -8 LUFS version sacrificed 6 dB of dynamic range to get there. It will sound flatter, more fatiguing, and less musical than the version that was mastered to the target with dynamics intact.

Dynamic range is what gives music its emotional impact. The contrast between a quiet verse and a loud chorus, the punch of a kick drum against a sustained pad, the breath before a vocal phrase hits - all of this lives in your dynamic range. Excessive limiting kills those contrasts.

A healthy dynamic range for most popular music genres falls between 6 and 10 dB (measured as the difference between your integrated LUFS and your short-term peaks). Classical and jazz can go wider. Heavily compressed genres like EDM and hip-hop often sit at the lower end. But even in those genres, the best masters leave room for transients to breathe.

The only scenario where mastering louder than -14 LUFS makes sense is if you are distributing exclusively on platforms without normalization, like SoundCloud or Bandcamp. Even then, consider your listeners' experience across an entire playlist before crushing your dynamics. To hear what proper loudness optimization sounds like on your own tracks, you can check your mix translation across playback systems before committing to a final master level.

Practical Workflow for Hitting Your Targets

1. Insert a loudness meter on your master bus before any processing. Note the integrated LUFS of your unmastered mix. Most well-balanced mixes sit between -18 and -22 LUFS.
2. Apply your mastering chain (EQ, compression, limiting) and monitor the integrated LUFS as you work. Let the limiter do the final loudness push, not your compressor.
3. Set your limiter ceiling to -1 dBTP with true peak mode enabled. Push the input gain until your integrated LUFS reads close to your target.
4. Let the track play through from start to finish at least once and read the final integrated LUFS. Spot-checking a chorus will not give you an accurate integrated reading.
5. A/B with a reference track at matched loudness. If your master sounds thin, dull, or harsh compared to the reference, address the tonal balance before adjusting loudness.
6. Export and verify. Open the bounced file in a fresh session and measure the integrated LUFS and true peak one more time. Rounding errors and dithering can shift readings by a fraction of a dB.