Nowadays, music is mainly distributed via online streaming services. Almost everybody listens to their music through iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or one of the many other online streaming services options there is on the market!

This new reality brings us new challenges as we want to master our tracks. We now need to optimize our masterings so that they sound amazing whenever they are played through those streaming services.

To get the best results, we need to understand exactly what is happening to the quality of our audio when it goes through those platforms and work within those parameters to maintain the highest quality possible for our music.

SO WHAT HAPPENS?

When receiving your song, streaming services convert it into a smaller file, making it easier for them to share it and stream it around the world wide web. 

It then scans your song for a loudness value and normalizes it so that all the songs played by that platform will have the same perceived loudness. 

That’s amazing in a sense, because that way, you don’t have to adjust the volume between each track when you are listening, and on a safety matter, it won’t blast your ears if a song is way louder than the one before!

The technical downside for us, however, is that we now need to adjust our masterings in order to please those streaming services’ new rules.

Here are some essentials you need to understand to deliver a kiss-ass e-master!