The landscape of music consumption has been transformed by technology, with streaming apps becoming the go-to platform for music enthusiasts. Consequently, mastering, the process of preparing a song for distribution, has evolved to meet the demands of these platforms.
Mastering involves applying processing to a song’s master bus to enhance cohesion, address level imbalances, and optimize loudness. However, when preparing a song for streaming services, additional considerations come into play. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at six crucial tips to effectively master your music for streaming services, aiming for optimal high fidelity audio playback.
Picture the hassle of manually uploading your music to over 25 streaming platforms such as Amazon, Apple Music, Deezer, and Spotify. This is where music distribution services like DistroKid, CD Baby, and TuneCore prove invaluable. By uploading your song to a music distributor, it seamlessly appears on various online music stores and streaming services. Additionally, the distributor handles royalty collection, simplifying payouts and financial details, with typically 100% of royalties going directly to the artist.
Understanding the technical prerequisites for uploading songs to a music distribution service is crucial. While each service may have slight variations, they generally accept 16 bit .1 kHz WAV or FLAC files. Depending on the platform, you might also have the option to upload files with a bit depth of 2 and a sample rate of up to 192 kHz.
Considerations like file size limits may arise; some services impose restrictions, such as a 1 GB maximum. If your rendered WAV file exceeds this limit, converting it to a FLAC file can be a viable solution. FLAC files, being a lossless audio format akin to WAV, offer the advantage of typically smaller file sizes.
Another factor to keep in mind is the duration of your songs. While many platforms have no specific time constraints, certain distributors, like DistroKid, require the average track length of albums to be 60 seconds or more. Understanding and meeting these criteria ensure a smooth and successful music distribution experience.
While its technically possible to export your music without applying any processing to the master bus and upload the file directly to a music distributor, the result might lack the tightness and polish that could elevate its overall quality. Nonetheless, the exported file still qualifies as a master file.
For those grappling with the intricacies of mastering, Plugin Alliance has addressed this challenge with Brainworxs bx masterdesk PRO. This all-in-one mastering suite plugin is designed to simplify the mastering process, offering a range of tools within an intuitive interface. With bx_masterdesk PRO, there’s no need to worry about constructing a complex plugin chain. All the components are pre-configured in a logical manner, drawing from the workflows of renowned mastering engineers. This ensures that you have the right tools at your disposal to master your music effectively.
Loudness Units Relative to Full Scale (LUFS) has gained prominence as a crucial consideration in music mastering. LUFS measures the perceived loudness of an audio file within a digital system, with a higher LUFS value, such as -6, indicating a louder sound compared to a lower value like -24.
Many streaming services now employ LUFS normalization to address the loudness wars—an era where the belief that “louder sounds better” led to progressively louder releases, potentially compromising audio quality. Normalizing songs to a consistent loudness level aims to create a more unified listening experience for consumers and helps artists avoid sacrificing quality for loudness, to some extent.
For instance, Spotify normalizes songs above -14 LUFS downwards. If a song is uploaded at negative 6 LUFS, it will be brought down to -14 LUFS. However, Spotify does not normalize songs upwards to -14 LUFS. A dynamic song with peaks just below the digital maximum may require the use of a limiter to boost its LUFS level, as applying a static gain boost could result in clipping.
While Spotify used to add a limiter by default, they’ve shifted away from this practice, possibly due to concerns about altering a song’s density and character. Premium Spotify users can opt for a “Loud” volume normalization option that normalizes all tracks to -11 LUFS, applying a limiter to quieter songs and static gain reduction to tracks exceeding 11 LUFS.
Ultimately, the goal is to limit your mix to a point that subjectively sounds good while aiming for a minimum LUFS level, typically around -13. The ideal LUFS level varies across genres, with modern pop, hip-hop, and rock often ranging from -13 to -9 LUFS, while heavily compressed EDM tracks may suit levels around -6 to -3 LUFS. Achieving -13 LUFS for dynamic orchestral arrangements may pose challenges, potentially requiring careful consideration to avoid unwanted limiting
Upon uploading your music to a distributor, it embarks on a journey to various music streaming services, undergoing a transcoding process that converts the audio file from one format to another. For instance, if you upload a WAV file, it gets transcoded into OGG VORBIS, AAC, FLAC, MP3, and OPUS formats for major streaming platforms.
The audio file users hear depends on factors like the device used, subscription tier, and internet connection quality. For instance, Spotify Premium users on a desktop might experience your music as a 320 kbps OGG VORBIS file, while on an iPhone, this could be a 96 kbps OGG VORBIS file.
Different audio codecs significantly impact audio quality. While an average listener may struggle to differentiate a high-bit-rate AAC, like 256 kbps, from a FLAC file, a 48 kbps AAC will exhibit noticeable high-frequency reduction. AAC files often omit inaudible audio content to reduce file size, unlike lossless FLAC files.
While streaming services use algorithms to transcode audio, you can anticipate how your music will sound after transcoding by using tools like ADPTR Audio System’s Streamliner. This codec auditioning tool lets you preview your music at various bit rates, providing insights into how it will be presented on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, YouTube, DEEZER, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and other streaming services. Instead of relying on chance, this proactive approach allows you to optimize your music for a range of listening scenarios.
You might have observed that switching between codec presets can significantly impact the peak level of your mix If you’ve started experimenting with Streamliner. This poses a challenge, as insufficient headroom in your masters can lead to clipping and distortion during transcoding.
While clipping the master bus is a common technique in EDM mastering, it’s crucial to execute this process using a clipper plugin to maintain control over the degree of clipping applied. Once the signal is clipped, you can introduce headroom by adjusting the output level of the clipper plugin.
The necessary amount of headroom varies based on the specific track being mastered. Less dynamic songs might avoid clipping with just 1 dB of headroom, whereas heavily compressed tracks with a limited dynamic range may require over 3 dB of headroom to prevent clipping, especially when transcoded to lower-quality streaming codecs.
To determine the precise amount of headroom needed for your mix, employ Streamliner on your master bus, selecting a low quality codec like AAC 64 kbps. Play the track from start to finish and assess the peak meter to gauge clipping. Offset any clipping by applying a negative gain adjustment using the Output Gain or Headroom feature in your final limiter.
Keep in mind that applying negative gain can lower the LUFS level of a song. Despite providing more headroom than usual, this adjustment doesn’t necessarily impact the perceived loudness on streaming services like Spotify. If your music remains above -14 LUFS after applying negative gain, it maintains a competitive loudness level on the platform without encountering codec-related clipping.
Before finalizing your song export, perform a meticulous A B comparison between your composition and a reference track. While Streamliner offers basic A/B capabilities, a more comprehensive tool like ADPTR Audio System’s Metric AB boasts an array of mastering meters. The plugins Playback module facilitates the filtering and auditioning of various frequency ranges. Additionally, it provides a spectrum analyzer, correlation meter, stereo image meter, dynamics meter, and loudness meter.
What sets this plugin apart is its dual or layered display for each module, enabling a direct visual comparison between your mix and the chosen reference track. You can load up to 16 reference tracks by simply dragging and dropping them into designated slots. The inclusion of a Loudness Match button ensures you can align the level of the reference track (B stream) with your mix A stream.
Here is a pro tip: assign the large A B button in Metric AB to a physical button on your computer keyboard or MIDI keyboard. This streamlines the toggling between the A stream and B stream, allowing you to make real-time adjustments to plugin parameters while seamlessly switching between tracks. This efficient workflow enhances your ability to fine-tune your mix and achieve optimal results during the mastering process.
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