Guide · August 2026
How to master a song for Spotify
Spotify plays every track through loudness normalization, so mastering for it is less about winning a volume war and more about hitting a target cleanly and protecting your peaks. Here is the whole process, in the order you should do it.
Desktop recommended · phones work for listening and quick edits, but the full console, meters and fastest renders are on a laptop or computer.
The workflow
- STEP 1
Fix the mix first
Mastering cannot rescue a buried vocal or a muddy low end. Get balance and cleanup right before you touch a master chain.
- STEP 2
Leave headroom
Bounce your mix with peaks around -6 dBFS and no clipping so the master stage has room to work.
- STEP 3
Master to the target
Aim for roughly -14 LUFS integrated with true peak at or below -1 dBTP for streaming delivery.
- STEP 4
Verify before export
Check integrated loudness, true peak and crest factor, then A/B loudness-matched against a reference you trust.
What normalization actually does to your master
Spotify measures the integrated loudness of your track and adjusts playback gain so it sits near the same perceived level as everything else in the queue. A master pushed to -7 LUFS gets turned down; the extra limiting you used to get there does not come back. What survives is the tonal balance and the transient detail you either kept or crushed.
That is the whole argument for a moderate target: you lose nothing competitive by mastering to about -14 LUFS integrated, and you keep the punch that makes a record feel loud after normalization.
The numbers that matter
- Integrated LUFS — around -14 for streaming. This is the value the platform reads.
- True peak — at or below -1 dBTP, so the lossy encode does not introduce inter-sample clipping.
- Crest factor — the gap between peak and average. Very low crest usually means you over-limited.
- Short-term loudness — watch the chorus, not the intro. That is where limiters give up.
A master chain that behaves
Order matters more than plugin count: corrective EQ to remove problems, gentle broadband compression for glue, tonal EQ for character, optional saturation for density, then a true-peak limiter last. Every move should answer a measurement you actually took.
If a step is not fixing something you can name — harshness at 3 kHz, a loose 60 Hz, a chorus that jumps 3 LU — leave it out. Neutral masters travel better across phones, cars and earbuds than characterful ones.
Doing it in MixTrackLab
MixTrackLab measures your bounce first — loudness, true peak, crest factor, spectral balance and harshness — then offers six mastering signatures against the loudness target you choose. Processing runs locally in your browser, so there is no upload queue and no copy of your record on a server.
Before export it runs a quality check for harshness, over-compression and peak safety, and gives you a loudness-matched A/B against your unmastered bounce so the comparison is honest.
Frequently asked questions
What LUFS should I master to for Spotify?
About -14 LUFS integrated is the safe reference point, with true peak at or below -1 dBTP. Spotify normalizes playback, so a louder master is simply turned down.
Should I turn off Spotify loudness normalization when checking my master?
Check both ways. Normalized playback tells you how most listeners will hear it; unnormalized tells you whether your peaks and dynamics are safe.
What file should I upload to my distributor?
Upload the highest quality master you have — 24-bit WAV at your session sample rate. Let the distributor and streaming platform handle the lossy encode.
Why does my master sound quieter than commercial records on Spotify?
After normalization, perceived loudness is mostly about dynamics and tonal balance rather than peak level. A dense low-mid balance and controlled transients read louder than heavy limiting.