Loudness Penalty Calculator
Drop a track into TrackGleam and see exactly how many dB Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and others turn it up or down. Measured in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
What is a loudness penalty?
Every major streaming service plays tracks back at a fixed reference loudness so listeners don't have to ride the volume knob between songs. Spotify, YouTube, Tidal and Amazon aim for about −14 LUFS; Apple Music references about −16 LUFS. If your master is louder than the target, the platform simply turns it down — that turn-down is the loudness penalty. Crushing your master to −8 LUFS doesn't make it louder on Spotify; it just gets turned down 6 dB and arrives with squashed dynamics and more transcoding distortion.
The fix is to master on purpose: land in the release-competitive range around −11 LUFS with a −1 dBTP true-peak ceiling — the small turn-down is harmless — or aim −14 streaming-safe for zero penalty; either way your track arrives clean and competitive with commercial releases — no wasted headroom.
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FAQ
Does this upload my file?
No. Your audio is decoded and measured entirely inside your browser with the Web Audio API. It never leaves your device.
What LUFS should I master to for Spotify?
Around −11 LUFS with a −1 dBTP ceiling is the release-competitive target for Spotify, YouTube, Tidal and Amazon — they just normalize it down a touch; −14 LUFS is the streaming-safe pick if you want zero turn-down. Apple Music references about −16 LUFS. See the full target guide →
What limiter ceiling should I use?
Set your final limiter to a −1.0 dBTP ceiling. Every streaming platform re-encodes your file to a lossy format, and that conversion creates inter-sample peaks that can sit above the sample peak your DAW shows you — which is why a master that reads 0.0 dBFS can still crackle on Spotify. One dB of true-peak headroom absorbs that. It does not make the track louder by itself; it is what lets a competitively loud master survive encoding cleanly. TrackGleam ceilings every master at −1.0 dBTP by default.
How accurate is the LUFS number?
It's measured to ITU-R BS.1770-4 / EBU R128 (K-weighting, 400 ms gated blocks) using the same engine as TrackGleam's mastering app, so what you see here is what you get when you master.