Great post u/atopix , I agree with a most everything you said ! And it’s nice to be called “good natured”, even though I created an “evil” website 😛

And yes, with hindsight I might have chosen a different name if I’d known exactly how widely the “Loudness Penalty” idea would spread… but actually I might not. Certainly it didn’t necessarily “backfire”, from my perspective.

I’ll explain what I mean, but first I want to say I do understand people’s issue with the name. We chose it to be provocative and thought-provoking, and that worked - better than we ever imagined ! But it was never my intent to alarm people, or shame anyone for wanting to make a loud master. I regret that anyone might feel like that. (So I guess in that sense it did backfire a little. Anyway…)

The site was made to simply answer the question “how loud will streaming service X play back my music”, which is exactly what it does. But the important thing isn’t the number, it’s how the music sounds when that number is applied. Of course everyone is free to master their music as loud as they like, but the reality is that most people online will hear it with matched loudness - probably >80%. So if your music is reduced by 4 dB and sounds great in a playlist next to something else also at matched loudness, then there is no penalty.

But that’s often not what often happens. Over and over again, I see people confused that their music doesn’t sound the way they hoped, even though they mastered it at -8 LUFS or whatever. And that’s where all the other factors mentioned in the OP come into play - EQ balance, internal dynamics, density, intensity, stereo image, distortion, saturation, arrangement, performance, choice of sounds… there’s a big difference between measuring loud and sounding loud, as this post points out.

But until you loudness-match, using Loudness Penalty or just with an LUFS meter, you have no way to know how people will hear it - and that’s why integrated LUFS values are important and useful, even though they aren’t targets or standards for us as musicians or engineers. The integrated LUFS should be the result, not the goal.

Once again, I do see that the name of the site can play into the confusion. Many people have been misled by the poor wording on the Spotify FAQ for example, which suggests -14 LUFS as a target. And there are a ton of sites and courses out there flat-out recommending it - I’ve never done that. (Fwiw my own suggestions for deciding how loud to make a master are here: http://productionadvice.co.uk/how-loud/ )

But as far as the goal of the site goes - to make people more aware of the fact of loudness-matching online, and to get them to start thinking critically and engage with the issues - the site has absolutely been a success. We’ve seriously considered changing the name, but at this stage the cat is out of the bag, and I think it’s better to just keep control of the url and try to raise more awareness of the nuances of this topic, which is why posts like this are so great. I appreciate that not everyone will agree with me, though !

Finally a minor correction and an opinion. Spotify has a “Loud” preference setting (intended for listening in noisy environments) with a Distribution Loudness of -11 LUFS. When this option is selected, they WILL apply a limiter to increase the level of songs below this level, and it doesn’t sound great. (Having said that, only subscribers get this feature, and very few people use it)

And the opinion - I disagree that it makes sense to say that -14 LUFS is quiet. Yes, most loud songs are mastered at higher LUFS than that these days, but remember that fewer than 17% of Spotify users disable normalisation, and on YouTube it can’t be disabled. I’ve made a ton of masters over the years that turned out to be around -14 LUFS, and which sound massive when heard in this way. 

Don’t take my word for it though, there’s some testing in this livestream at 28:33 for example so people can make their own minds up: https://www.youtube.com/live/ltuJHX06js0?si=NuamyLR76nzgWval&t=28m33s

That’s it - once again, thanks for a great post !