Here's a
short but informative introduction to the idea of tailoring your production to a specific platform, in this case Apple Music. Written by Tom Frampton, whom you may know under the tradename Mastering the Mix, and seller of the recently-discussed EXPOSE analysis utility.
Yes, I pretty much dismissed EXPOSE as being ultimately useless for most of us, and this article makes no secret that it's a sales pitch for EXPOSE. But there's no doubt Tom knows his stuff and consistently offers solid advice on his
blog.
Key points of the article:
- Leave at least 1 dB of headroom to accommodate the AAC encoding process
- Apple Music streams at an average of -14 LUFS (plus or minus 2) but only if Soundcheck is enabled
- Commercial music still routinely ignores this standard and still tends to master things too loud