It's a question I get asked fairly often - "if YouTube reduces the loudness of loud songs, why don't I always hear it ?"
And the answer is often that the person is listening to YouTube Music, rather than the main video platform. YouTube Music is a dedicated audio-only subscription platform, with only a tiny fraction of the number of users of the main video platform. But many people don't realise they're separate sites - it's certainly not immediately obvious to most of us, despite having a different URL and logo.
OK, so why do we notice loudness normalisation on YouTube's video platform, but not YouTube Music ? My answer used to be that YouTube Music simply doesn't use loudness normalisation yet, but in fact I've recently realised that's not correct. The platform IS reducing the loudness of the loudest songs, just not nearly as much as YouTube Video - because it has a different Distribution Loudness level.
Specifically, YouTube Music will only reduce the loudness of your music if it exceeds -7 LUFS, instead of the much more widely-known level of -14 LUFS used by Spotify, TIDAL and many other services.
The screenshot above demonstrates this – "Bangarang" by Skrillex is mastered at a blistering -5.3 LUFS, with True Peaks reaching +3.48 dBTP(!). It's reduced in volume by over 8 dB to -14 LUFS on the video platform as a result, along with everything else above that level. Whereas on the YouTube Music platform the handy Stats for Nerds function reveals the same song is reduced by only 2.3 dB to a Distribution Loudness level of -7 LUFS.
(If you're doing mental arithmetic and wondering why there are decimal-point discrepancies in those values, it's likely a combination of whether the reported values were measured before or after upload, and the influence of the codecs on the final content. Either way, the final playback levels are exactly -14 LUFS and -7 LUFS as expected.)
So far so nerdy, but the obvious questions now are:
So firstly:
In a nutshell, if you master your music below -7 LUFS, YouTube Music will leave the loudness untouched, and as a result anything below this level may not play at as high a level as the loudest material on the site. Unlike the YouTube video platform where most music is already above -14 LUFS and reduced in level, this means that many of the uploads to YouTube Music won't have their loudness changed, which is why most people think it doesn't use normalisation at all - myself included, until recently.
Of course it also means there's no point in going any louder than -7 LUFS if the goal is simply to be played back louder, because that simply won't work. Going louder than this will also change the relationship in loudness between different songs on an album, with some being reduced in level further than others, which annoys many artists.
So:
Of course there's no way to know for sure, but my best bet is that it's actually a quick and easy way to avoid the problem I mentioned in that last paragraph - changing the loudness relationships between songs on an album. The YouTube platforms currently don't support "albums" - every file is a separate video upload, so there is no "Album Mode" as there is on Apple Music and Spotify. Using a Distribution Loudness of -7 LUFS prevents users being blasted by extremely loud songs, but also maintains the song-to-song balance of most albums.
Which leads us to the final question:
The answer to this question is as usual – it depends !
If your goal is for your music to play back at the highest level possible and YouTube Music is an important platform for you, it means the loudest song on your album needs to be mastered close to -7 LUFS. (There's no need to make everything that loud of course, unless every song is intended to be maxed out - but it's useful to know where "the top of the scale" is.)
Going louder than this on the other hand, won't allow your music to be played any louder - just as exceeding -14 LUFS on almost all other platforms won't be heard by the majority of users.
If your goal is to get the best possible sound for your music and you don't want to push the loudest songs as far as -7 LUFS, that's fine. On YouTube Music you may not sound quite as loud as the loudest material, but remember there's more to sounding loud than just LUFS values. And this platform only has a fraction of the total number of users listening to music online.
Perhaps most importantly - this could change any day, now. The latest AES Guidelines for streaming services recommend using Album Normalisation with the loudest songs at -14 LUFS, as TIDAL already do, and YouTube have been active participants in the process of those guidelines being developed. Adding "Album Mode" to YouTube Music seems much simpler than trying the same thing on the video platform, and my prediction is that they'll adopt these guidelines (or something very close to them) sooner rather than later - and at that point, the -7 LUFS Distribution Loudness will become an irrelevant footnote.
So my best advice for getting great results that will always work well is the same as it has always been - don't aim for LUFS targets ! Master your music at whatever level sounds best to you, then TEST it at the Distribution Level of platforms that are important to you, either by hand or using my free Loudness Penalty website. If you're happy with the way it sounds compared to suitable reference material testing in this way, great ! If not, you have a heads-up and the opportunity to try other options and find something you're happy with.
And if you'd like my suggestions for deciding how to find the perfect balance of loudness and dynamics for your music, click here.
