 So in recent years, there's been a lot of talk that the loudness war ended when Spotify and the other streaming services started doing normalization, which, um, haha, I'm right. But I get it, since unfortunately tons of YouTubers and TikTok personalities who aren't so good at research propagated the myth that Anyone who doesn't master their track to Spotify's recommended level of minus-four team loves is ruining their song, because it will just get turned down, and you are just failing your song by turning it up any more as it will be quieter than other songs. Yeah, Rocket Scientist, you're really the one who should be explaining things to people. Maybe leave that to those of us who actually read and not just watch TikToks. Anyway, all you have to do to see for yourself that most major artists in the dominant music genres on Spotify are mastering way higher than minus-four team loves is simply call up a playlist on Spotify and start typing the songs into the amazing website musicstacks.com and as you'll see, nearly none of the songs will be at minus-ten, nevermind minus-fourteen, and unless you're making folk, Americana, or music related to classical, it'll be nowhere near that. Since this loves target is only for if you want a target for the least loud you need to make a song before Spotify turns it up. In fact, because I'm such an angel, I took four of the most popular playlists in rap, EDM, pop and rock, and did this for you already. On the screen now is a handy graphic showing you the averages I did by ripping each one for 60 minutes. And while I know just because musicians do, it doesn't mean it's smart. I mean, let's be honest, there's a strong case that what musicians mostly do is extremely dumb. But in this case, it's because these musicians are listening to smart people. So since we established the loudness war has never really ended, kind of like most American wars, to be honest, and loudness clearly matters to major artists trying to compete on streaming and get good playlist placements. Well, there's got to be a point where it's too much, right? So I wanted an answer to that. So I set out to find out. So time for some background real quick. It's a funny thing. While a lot of people know me as the YouTube guy who talks about music marketing, in all reality, I've mastered thousands of records, like literally that many, and I've been mastering since 1999 when I worked in one of the biggest indie mastering houses west-west side under Alan Duchess, who is one of the most credited engineers in the history of music, while also being one of the smartest guys I've ever met. Anyway, this is all to say my head is still in mastering since I do it every day. So one of the things I often do while I'm mastering is look at the reference song I've been given by an artist. I go over to music stacks since it tells you how loud a song is, as you can see here. And I'm often curious what I'm listening to, but don't have a way to measure on my phone when I'm walking around and just like, OK, let's listen to the reference of the thing we're about to work on when I get back from the gym, which clearly you see I hit a lot. Luckily, I found myself emailing with Luke from music stacks. If you don't know, aggregates Spotify data onto the site music stacks. I then asked him if he could spit me out the data and he sure did. And what I found was wild. So let's talk about that. So I'd probably be a little remiss to not give you background on what we're going to listen to. So first of all, one of the biggest misconceptions about mastering and loudness is what it actually even is. Since audio people are such nerds, they love to make this about numbers and distortion percentages. And frankly, I got no time for that nerd. Let's talk reality. Music at its core is a mood altering drug that makes you feel a way you'd rather feel. And every decision we make, including mastering along the way, creates a different emotion and loudness along with the distortion and sometimes pumping it creates, elicits a different emotion in a listener. And frankly, these songs that are the loudest on Spotify, diverse sounds show the nuance of emotion there is in loudness and how much different it can work emotionally throughout each song. If you just put a number on it, well, you really miss the boat. But a lot of these nerds who complain about it are the type of people who need rules to feel lead over people. So complex emotions are a bit much further sad existences, because truly, the guy bitching about records being loud on message boards is one step away from incel in levels of being pathetic. Now, when a song is louder than most, we have to remember what's usually happening is it's being made loud in the stages of mastering. So the mastering engineer is using dynamic control, saturation, clipping and limiting, and it's taking the volume that is the loudest and it's smushing it down. And that brings more of the sound right below it louder, as you can see in this little graphic I made for you. Now, in many genres, this is then perceived as having more resolution and impact or what many people just call energy. Anyway, as the graph shows, this is what's happening. Now, that's all well and good, but to attain this, you get distortion and that can make it unpleasant to listen to as you're going to find out when you listen to some of these songs. And that really is the balance for so many. When you're evaluating how loud a master should be, a lot of the time, the choices are about when the dynamics go away and it doesn't hit any more in certain parts or when does it distort? And that's for the creators to decide and then us listeners to decide when we decide whether or not to listen to it after they're done making their record. But to get a sense of how hard this loudness is to achieve while still getting any plays, Luke did a really smart thing when he made me this spreadsheet. He made one of songs that have below 50 in popularity score and one that is above 50. In the one above 50, the span of the top 100 songs is between 3.7 luffs to 0.3. This tells me it's really hard to get a song this loud. It's still have it be highly listenable. And frankly, after spending the day listening to these songs, well, a lot of them are pretty abrasive and sound like they were mastered by being run through a boss distortion battle. And here you can see a nice graph, Luke from Musicstacks made of songs. And it really shows how when songs are excessively loud like these, well, they really don't do well on Spotify, which is why so many of them don't have a high popularity score and nearly none of them are in the upper percentile. And truly, if you enjoy this video, you should actually be really be tipping Luke because over on Musicstacks, if you use this site regularly, he has a buy me a coffee button and he really deserves it for doing this. OK, but enough theory. Let's listen to some songs. So let's start off with a caveat. So making sure we only listen to ones with this popularity score 50. What it really ensures is that the songs have been listenable to a lot of people and aren't just well noise. It means that they actually have some commercial viability and people can still listen to them, which is I think is the thing that's actually teachable when we listen to loudness since examples of just really loud stuff that no one can listen to is boring. And if you don't understand a popularity score, well, last week's video was on Spotify. Popularity scores is linked in the description. So let's listen. And if you want to follow along, there's a playlist down in the description on Spotify, where I kindly made you each song on the spreadsheet so you can follow along. I thought it would be a fun to start off with the least loud one, which clocks in at three point seven nine five loves. And as I say, these names, you know, I'm about to gringo it up. So here we go. M.C. Nego de Marcona, M.C. Mano Donny, D.J. J.F.D.C. And the song is called Beat De Felici Dada. So let's be honest here. This sounds like it's been played from a blown out P.A. But apparently some people feel it as it rocks a 53 percent popularity score. And I should say it really brings things into perspective of how little Spotify turning these songs down does, since all of them are turned down around 10 dB because they're so loud. But when you amass all that information in the front of the image, it really makes a difference in the perception of loudness. And if you hit play on one of the songs in this playlist and then one of that's minus six loves and compare it, you will see how huge a difference it is. One of the records that's dominant on this playlist is J.Peg Mafia and Danny Brown's record that is truly one of the greatest titles of all recent times scaring the hoes. And the first song up is Burfit. Now, I've actually listed this record a bit already because it folks. And while you can hear some distortion to my ear, this is the most cohesive one that feels like the loudness fits the vibe. And while I wouldn't call it clean, it sounds good and like a good vibe. And frankly, I don't think the loudness would be what scares the hoes. And six of the songs in this chart actually come from this record alone. The track God loves you even clocks it at one point three three luffs. And I think it sounds great and damn clean. And there's a J.Peg Mafia track that's solo called Hazard Pay that's at zero point nine two luffs and sounds good, too. Another artist that's all over this chart is Lil Darky. And the track I think sounds best is called you. I am very angry at Sirius, which does that thing that triple X Tansi on her. I'll re pronounce it. Brought to the mainstream of hip hop of doing really distorted songs in a vibey way. And frankly, I feel it. It clocks it at one point seven luffs, which is two whole DB louder than the first track we listen to, but doesn't even feel as abrasive as that track. Their song Black Sheep also clocks it at minus one point four two luffs and was similar in feeling. But on this chart, you get eight of his songs and some of them as they get loud can be pretty rough to listen to. Next, we have an interesting one. Justice versus Simeon's club classic, We Are Your Friends. Now, what's wild about this track is unlike the rest of these. It's pretty old. I can't tell you how many nights in my life I spent around 2006 to 2008 grinding girls with stupid haircuts on dance floors to this song. But anyway, mastering this thing. Now, I never realized how small and distorted the song was. But when it was on a club PA and that vocal starts to get sung and everyone's singing along, well, it feels great. But truly, this sounds pretty bad in retrospect. I've had this one pretty interesting. It's Forget the Real World and it clocks it at minus one point four luffs. And this is the cleanest of the dance tracks, but not exactly clean. But I think it's teachable that it could be this loud and this clean. But then right below it, we have DJ Ph Calvin MC. I'm not even doing this. You could read it on the screen, which oddly enough is the cleanest of the reggaeton tracks on this chart, yet are so obscenely loud. Going back to a loud reggaeton track at six luffs is truly wild. How much the Spotify normalization doesn't matter when I listen. Now we come to a track I love 100 Gecks Hollywood Baby. And I was listening to this song when the idea of this video came. And truly, I think the loudness works amazing for this. And it really is like so much huger than most songs when you put it on a playlist as I've done many times. Now, I found this next one interesting since it's from 1959. It's it honestly, it just sounds like an old distorted track. But it distorts in that old timey way, which gets it loud. But like, I know a hundred old timey songs like this and they sure don't feel like they're my as one point oh nine luffs. So this one is interesting. It's fear and loathing in Las Vegas is let me hear. So this is the only one I would call like a traditional rock track. So it's truly rock really does seem to get unlistable once it's this loud. And I got to say, this one's a rough listen. Now, the next one I found interesting is Eminem So Bad from 2010, which is loud, but not that dirty yet unprecedentedly loud for this era. I'd be curious to go back and listen to the CD and see if they made it specifically for streaming this loud or if it was this loud on the CD, because wow. If I'd be remiss to not point out the song that has the highest popularity score and yet is loud and the song is called Punta Mexicana. I think it's a little bit much for me. It's pretty loud, but you can hear the vibe is good for clocking in at Myas 0.96 Luffs. But of course, we have to discuss the loudest song here, which is NXVA Mains Fresh, which clocks it at Myas 0.351 Luffs, which beats out by 0.001 Luffs, Grizz and Subtronics, EDME, Dubstepy, Banger, Grizz, Tronix, too. And honestly, I could barely stand to listen to either of them at my normal listening volume and had to turn it down to get through it because it's too loud. So to wrap up what I really learned here is once you get above four Luffs, there's a reason there's not a lot of songs that are popular on Spotify, because frankly, it's insanely hard to get them listable, which is why there's so few songs with this high of a popularity score above Myas 3.7 Luffs on Spotify. But what I find interesting is the songs it works for. Well, they really do hit hard. But really, this is about making your own conclusions, which I'd really love to hear about in the comments. And what you found listening this playlist here, because I am but one nerd, and I know a lot of you will have thoughts and insights. So leave them below. And if you like this video, I comment on music every week on here. And on screen now is a video I made explaining Spotify's popularity score and how you could boost it. Click that and keep learning. Thanks for watching.