Loudness Wars and Music Streaming: The Key Facts You Should Know
No, it wasn’t about competing with your neighbors as to who played the loudest music. The loudness wars were a series of trends in the music industry (primarily between record labels) to gradually increase the volume of recorded and distributed music in an effort to distinguish their records from the rest in the name of marketing. For decades, this trend was carried out and is evident in vinyl records, cassettes, radio, and, of course, CDs and DVDs. Everyone wanted to sound louder, especially during the era when rock was king. Yes, it seems normal and harmless in terms of sound. However, this war started to encounter problems with CDs: they have a volume limit beyond which nothing can be done because, in order to sound louder, what must be done is to increase compression and amplification, generating absolutely undesirable distortions.
That’s why, all professionals in the audio industry, such as Enhanced Media, must be aware of it.
So, let’s take a look at history, as well as why Music Streaming, perhaps, means the end of such madness.
It is interesting to note that mastering engineers owe too much to this phenomenon, which took place in the crazy 60s. Finishing the mixes and trying to achieve the highest possible volume were the last steps before taking the music out of the oven, and, in fact, were the reasons for the birth of the Mastering engineer profession as we know it. Excess volume was already a necessity back then, and, therefore, it was essential making these adjustments before finishing the whole production process. Well, this resulted in those musical products selling more and being better received because they sounded louder.
These early beginnings of the level war had no drastic consequences at all in terms of the final sound of the products. Vinyl, which was the standard format at the time, did not allow for exaggerated levels of compression and limiting, as any excess levels in the mastering and cutting process resulted in physical damage to the master. Nevertheless, things got a little hairy decades later. In the late ’90s, when rock was already starting to show its last great shine and possibilities before decaying as trendy music, albums like RHCP’s Californication, Korn’s Follow The Leader, or Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar show a clear excess of compression and limiting to generate more loudness. From that moment on, the industry began to notice with concern the consequences of this — digital distortion, as well as certain fatigue in listeners after blasting their Discmans’ headphones for a while.
The issue was that, in the nineties, the mastering of most albums was already being done on digital platforms. The use of compressors and limiters to reduce or cut peaks were basically the mastering techniques that the record companies used to increase the average value of the masters. And let’s not forget the fact that the human ear responds to average values, not peak ones, and, therefore, the higher the average level, the louder it will be perceived. it’s simple. Since that time the meter that was used to measure the average was the RMS, however, it takes an average voltage that is not entirely accurate if we want to measure how strong is the final master.
Furthermore, the 2000s came with a clear competition to generate more volume, and mastering studios were increasingly equipped with compressors and limiters to cut the dynamic range to the very top and thus increase the volume of the final master, completely sacrificing the dynamics and depth of the mixes.
Action has been taken, of course. There is the ITU-R BS.1770–3 standard, where by means of an algorithm it is possible to implement a meter that responds in a similar way to the human ear in terms of loudness, and a new scale called the Loudness Unit Full Scale is determined as the new meter.
So, what role has streaming music played here?
Well, finally, in 2011 it was established that the standard average level for loudness in broadcasting should be -23 LUFS, and, in this way, a loudness normalization began to be regulated, in which everything should be governed by average levels and not by peak levels. A special standard level for music has yet to be established, but the beginning of the end of the level war has already begun, and that’s a fact. Most digital music streaming channels such as Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube are implementing a normalization system in which everything that is streamed sounds at the same level regardless of the volume at which it is mastered.
For example, iTunes has the option to check the volume level of all of its music, and each user can level their entire music library if they so choose. It is possible that this will become a general rule, and the war is over. What’s more: masters that sound tighter and more compressed, being standardized with respect to those with good dynamics, will lose their appeal, and, on the contrary, will sound worse.
Let’s hope then that future wars will be about sounding better, not louder.
