Hey! I am not surprised you feel lost, as these terms of services are extremely (probably deliberately) confusing. However, I’d like to urge everyone not to panic/worry. It’s probably not intentional, but there is a lot of misinformation on Instagram and YouTube. Here’s a better video breaking it down: https://youtu.be/jQAQicMj1Y8?si=HjN2Bq4kQDs1OQho The TLDR is that this new terms of service has little to do with your actual music. It’s to do with content directly uploaded to Spotify (incl. Spotify for Artists). The terms affecting your music is the agreement between your distributor and Spotify, since that is who uploads your music onto Spotify. Secondly, these terms of service often look scarier in writing than in practice. The terms of service for everything you use look terrible - meta has the right to everything you post on Instagram, YouTube has rights to all your videos etc. In some cases these rights are necessary - Spotify is constantly innovating new features (ie their new remix features), unlike other services which are mostly side-shows for major tech companies (Apple, Amazon, etc). There is a strong narrative of hate towards Spotify at the moment and so people are keen to jump on that for any reason they can. So I’d just be careful with what you see/read and seek out multiple and well-researched or informed sources (Andrew Southworth, from the video linked above, is in my view one of the best for this).

You could consider aiming for a higher integrated LUFS level, maybe -13 or -12, IF you’re looking for more consistency. The extra compression or limiting required to reach that level will make your track a little more consistent (less dynamic) and the Spotify and other services will just reduce the volume a bit when equalising volume on its service. -14 should mean Spotify don’t have to do anything to the volume as part of its equalisation (in particular not have to increase volume by applying their own automatic limiting, which everyone should avoid) but is right on the threshold, whereas -13 or higher means you know Spotify will simply reduce the volume of the whole track a little bit. The loudness penalty analyser is great for testing this! You can export a master at -14 LUFS and then one at -13 and -12, load each of them into the analyser using multiple tabs, then switch between them to compare what each will sound like on Spotify or other services.

@Sebastian Jautschus I think entirely up to you! Defo do the comparison with the loudness penalty analyser website to properly hear the comparison. To be honest, my ear can’t hear a dramatic difference between -12LUFS and -14LUFS. I personally go for -12 because I think the extra compression masks the inconsistency in my playing 🙈 (i.e. hitting some notes too loudly compared to others). I also personally want to make sure my track is ‘at least’ -14LUFS just to guarantee Spotify doesn’t need to apply their own limiting, and I like a bit of safety room. It’s worth remember that the average integrated LUFS level in other genres is much much higher - some genres tend to be around -10LUFS, others as high as -4LUFS. So even -12LUFS is still very dynamic. But this is all just my personal approach, I think as long as you hit -14LUFS you’re golden. You should really just be apply compression/limiting based on what you want it to sound like, rather than to hit a slightly arbitrary number.

@Sebastian Jautschus hi Joe - most distributors should be able to get your music on Pandora! I am not an expert on Pandora as it is a US only service and we are in Europe, so I have never experienced it from a consumer perspective. At Sky Valley Records we are able to get a few tracks on some of their editorial ‘stations’ which tends to give artists a small headstart, but I think most of @Sebastian Jautschus success on Pandora is then from their algorithm or other organic growth on the platform once people started listening and hopefully enjoying 🙂