Nov 13, 2009
How to make your song stand out on the radio
There is a myth that in order to stand out on the radio, your song needs to be louder than anyone else’s.
Bollocks.
Maybe this was true during the first Loudness Wars, back when every Motown release was louder than the previous one, but not any more – not for a long time.
Radio stations use very aggressive multi-band compression to control the level of everything they broadcast, for two reasons:
- To ensure decent reception in low-signal areas and
- To even out any differences in playback volume without the DJ having to adjust everything “on-the-fly”
What this means is that really high-level CDs won’t sound any better on the radio, just more squashed and distorted.
Don’t believe me ? Take a listen to BBC Radio 2.
(Brief tangent – Radio 2 is rapidly becoming a national treasure, in my opinion, along with 6 Music. The station now caters for such a wide demographic that it’s output has become almost insanely eclectic, and as a result – often pure genius. If you don’t live in the UK you may not be able to listen to the streaming content – if so, there are ways – Google is your friend : )
The Evidence
It really leapt out at me recently when I heard Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” back to back with Lily Allen’s “22” while I was driving home from work. (Affiliate links)
There was no obvious difference in volume, despite the fact that one is a pristine 70’s classic, whereas the other is a tragic current Loudness War casualty.
There was one other, very obvious sonic difference, though.
“Fifty Ways” sounded fantastic, and Lily sounded dreadful. Even more dreadful than it does on CD, because the song was already so loud that the broadcast compression was mauling it to death.
And Radio 2’s broadcast compression is mild, in comparison to most commercial UK stations, let alone in the US. An in fact, Lily’s album isn’t even that loud, by recent standards…
For more proof, check out my interview with the BBC about Metallica’s infamous “Death Magnetic”, in the side-bar over there on the right. The show includes two clips from the album, one of which had 14dB more dynamic range (!) than the other, before they were broadcast. Or, check out this blog post along similar lines.
So, how do you stand out on the radio these days ?
Simple.
Hit the “sweet spot” where your track is loud and punchy but still dynamic, and sits just underneath the broadcast compression thresholds. It will sound exactly the way you want, without any extra processing – and as a result a great deal more ear-catching than most modern releases, which will be fighting the limiter all the way to the scrapheap.
“But how loud is that ?!” I hear you cry. Well, sadly I can’t give you an exact answer to that – different radio stations use different amounts of compression and processing, so this is tough to call.
(I said it was simple, not easy !)
But if we take Lily and Paul as examples – our old friend the TT Dynamic Range Meter tells us that “50 Ways” has a dynamic range of 12dB or more for most of the song, as opposed to Lily who averages only 8dB in the choruses, down to 6dB for the really loud bits.
So my advice is, predictably enough – keep it dynamic.
A dynamic range of DR8 is the most compressed anything ever needs to be – and, I’m talking heavy rock there, not catchy pop like Lily. Stay in the DR14-DR10 range except for the very loudest bits and you’ll be doing just fine.
Of course, the very best (and easiest !) way to achieve this is to get your music professionally mastered by an engineer who knows what he’s up to.
Oh – you will also need great songs, catchy hooks, superb recordings and fantastic performances, but you knew all that already, right ?!
(Image by Ian Hayhurst)
.gif "Dynamic Range Foundation - Active Member")
Disclaimer: I’m the guy that falls asleep during mixes in studios, so I’m not qualified to give technical advice. But I recently had to help someone get music online and we had to convert to MP3 and play it on tinny speakers. What was amazing (to me) is that acoustic jazz sounds better on an iPod than U2. Music that is well mixed and mastered survives compression. Will there come a day when bands will do separate MP3 mixes?
The other – more selfish – reason for advocating good mixing and mastering is that I want to hear the words! Another article perhaps?
Hi Ian,
Thanks for the advice on what DR range is needed. That’s really helpful.
Hoping that the senseless loudness war approach will be a footnote in history real soon. I don’t even want to think about all the musical nuances that got lost and sacrificed just to inflate the dB levels.
Great stuff, Ian. I stand corrected about the radio loudness stuff.
Have you ever taken a look at waveforms before and after going through massive radio compression. Regardless of whether the song has a TON of dynamic range (lots of peaks and dips in the waveform) or the song is compressed to the point of looking like a sausage, it still comes out looking the same on the other side of the radio compressors (squashed).
So you’re absolutely right, keep it nice and dynamic, and it’ll handle the radio mangling better than something that has already had the life squashed out of it.
@ Michael – Lossy compression works by throwing away the stuff you supposedly can’t hear. One simple way to choose what that “stuff” is, is to concentrate on the quiet material. A hugely compressed rock or pop track doesn’t have any quiet stuff to begin with, so immediately there’s a difficulty about deciding what to remove.
I hate it when people say you should squash music more before encoding to mp3 – the exact opposite is true. As a rule of thumb, the more open and dynamic the original, the better the encode will sound.
@ Marko – I couldn’t agree more. Hopefully before long everything will be lossless…
I’m amazed by budding producers who confuse data compression with audio compression..
“It’s not compressed, it’s a WAV”
and
“but I thought if it’s compressed it’s bad?”
..were recent examples I’ve heard.
I had recently the same experience will listening to radio while driving.
First pass was Lloyd Cole & The Commotions “My Bag” followed by U2’s latest “Get On Your Boots” single.
The diference in the snare, depth, and clarity between the songs was amazing.
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yep i couldn’t agree more on the radio compression. i recently tried out this on the visual point of view.
i recorded a radio recording into wav and compared to the CD ripped wav of a song from 1994 and view on soundforge, the song is tom petty – it’s good to be a king. of course as you all know that the verse is just as loud as the chorus on the radio compressed wav file and they also made it sound distorted from original recording. the little gently cymbol seems so loud now.
honestly i don’t like radio’s sound quality. i remember in the 80’s up till 1991. radio wasn’t so loud