What Is LUFS? How Loud Your Track Should Be for Spotify

If you've ever uploaded a song, played it next to a few others and wondered why yours sounds quieter, or louder but somehow flatter, LUFS is the reason, and once it clicks you'll stop guessing every time you export. We measured one of our own tracks, a song called Grass, to show what the numbers mean in practice and what Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music do to it the moment it's uploaded.

Quick Answer

LUFS measures how loud a track sounds to people, and streaming services use it to play every song at roughly the same volume: Spotify and YouTube aim for −14 LUFS and Apple Music for −16. That means mastering louder doesn't make your song louder there, because it just gets turned down, so most tracks are better off somewhere between −14 and −10 LUFS with the true peak kept at −1 dBTP or lower.

What LUFS Means in Simple Words

LUFS stands for Loudness Units relative to Full Scale, a way of measuring loudness the way your ears hear it rather than how high the waveform peaks, which is why two tracks can hit the same peak level and still sound very different in volume. A dense, compressed track keeps its energy up the whole time, while a dynamic one only touches the top now and then.

One LU is the same as one decibel, so a track at −10 LUFS is 4 dB louder than one at −14, and you'll usually see three readings on a meter:

• Integrated: the average over the whole song, which is the number streaming services use.
• Short-term: a rolling three-second window.
• Momentary: a 400-millisecond window that jumps around constantly.

We Measured One of Our Own Tracks

Grass is a demo we made back in our uni days, and it never went through proper mixing or mastering beyond a few small tweaks, so it's a raw, honest example of what a home bounce looks like on a loudness meter. We ran the 2:12 track through FFmpeg's EBU R128 meter, the same broadcast standard most loudness meters follow.

Grass

0:00

/132.48

1×

Apart from the breakdown at 1:35 and the fade-out at the end, Grass sits around −10 to −10.5 LUFS the whole way through, which is louder than you might expect from an unmastered demo and explains the tiny loudness range of 3 LU. Modern pop, rap and electronic music usually sits in a similar place after mastering, so the track was already pushed hard in the mix and export, without a limiter to keep its peaks under control.

What Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music Do to Grass

Because Grass is louder than every target, every platform turns it down, by an amount that depends on the platform and the listener's settings.

A listener on Spotify hears Grass at the same volume as a much quieter, more dynamic song, so the extra loudness is simply handed back. The squashing stays, though: drums and transients that were pushed down to make the track louder don't come back when Spotify turns it down.

The Problem We Found: A True Peak Above Zero

The issue that matters more for Grass is its true peak of +0.6 dBTP. True peak measures the highest point of the actual sound wave, including the bits between digital samples, and anything above 0 can distort when a service converts the file to its own format, which every streaming platform does on upload. When we decoded our MP3, 671 samples went over full scale, a small number but enough to cause tiny crackles on loud hits, and a common result of exporting an unmastered mix without a limiter at the end.

The fix is a true-peak limiter last in the chain with its ceiling at −1 dBTP, plus a WAV export for distribution rather than an MP3, since MP3 encoding pushes peaks higher on its own. Spotify recommends going further, to −2 dBTP, for masters louder than −14 LUFS, which Grass is.

So How Loud Should You Master?

There's no single right number, but if your music mostly lives on streaming services, anything between about −14 and −10 LUFS works, because it'll be turned to the same level either way, and staying closer to −14 keeps more of the punch in your drums. Going past −9 or −8 mostly buys you loudness that gets taken away again, along with some of the energy you were trying to add.

Rap, trap and dance music usually sit at the louder end of that range, since a track at −14 can sound thin in a playlist if the mix underneath isn't full. For Grass, the loudness is already in a sensible place for its style, so a proper master would mostly be about controlling the peaks and adding polish, not making it louder.

If You Make Beats for Other Artists

Beats work a little differently, because nothing normalizes them when a rapper loads one into their session. A loud, limited preview might sound impressive on your store page, but the artist's engineer still has to fit a vocal on top, and a beat that's already crushed to −8 LUFS leaves no room for it.

Many producers handle it with two versions: a loud, tagged preview for the store and a cleaner, less-limited WAV for the actual lease, with a few decibels of headroom so the engineer can mix and master the finished song properly.

How to Check Your Own Track's LUFS

Free plugins like Youlean Loudness Meter show integrated LUFS, true peak and loudness range right on your master channel, so you don't need any special gear. Logic Pro has its own Loudness Meter built in, and if you're still choosing a DAW, our Logic Pro vs Ableton vs FL Studio comparison covers what each one includes.

Play the whole song through the meter before you read the integrated number, since it averages over everything it hears. If you like the command line, FFmpeg can measure a file without even opening a DAW, which is how we measured Grass.

Our Take

LUFS sounds technical, but the idea behind it is reassuring: the loudness war is over on streaming, and you no longer have to crush a song to compete. Make the track sound good, keep it somewhere between −14 and −10 LUFS, set your limiter's ceiling at −1 dBTP and let the platforms handle the volume. Our old uni demo was already loud enough and still had a peak problem we'd never have noticed by ear, which is the best argument for keeping a meter on your master. If you're building out your setup, our list of the best music production plugins is a good next stop.

FAQ

What Does LUFS Stand For?

LUFS stands for Loudness Units relative to Full Scale. It measures how loud audio sounds to the human ear, and one LU equals one decibel.

What LUFS Should I Master to for Spotify?

Spotify normalizes to −14 LUFS on its Normal setting and recommends keeping true peaks below −1 dBTP, or below −2 dBTP if your master is louder than −14, so most music is fine anywhere from −14 to −10 LUFS.

Will My Song Sound Quieter if It's Below −14 LUFS?

On Spotify, a quieter track is turned up toward −14 as long as it has headroom, so it won't be left quiet. YouTube only turns tracks down, so a quiet song there stays quiet.

What's the Difference Between LUFS and dB?

Decibels measure level, like the peak height of a waveform, while LUFS measures perceived loudness over time, which is why a track can peak at 0 dB and still sound quieter than another that peaks lower but stays dense.

Is −14 LUFS Too Quiet for Rap?

Not on streaming services, because louder tracks are turned down to the same level anyway. Rap is often mastered louder, around −10 LUFS or above, for density and feel, but pushing much further mostly adds distortion that listeners will hear after normalization.

What Is True Peak?

True peak is the highest point of the actual sound wave, including what happens between digital samples, and keeping it at −1 dBTP or lower stops distortion when streaming services convert your file.