Adele - Easy On Me (Official Video)

[mikej]

"Is anyone really going to switch off the song at this point because of a pitch-slide? And even if they did, wouldn’t that listener’s song stream already count towards the charts by then anyway?"

Her team might possibly be one step ahead of you there. I don't know for sure, but 'the internet' would suggest that YouTube counts a 'view' as as a user initiated stream watched for 30 seconds or more.  Adele doesn't actually start singing until after 1 minute and 50 seconds into the official video... 

I have wondered for a while if adding silence actually allows you to cheat the normalization and bump the average volume up a bit on YouTube? Lots of silence could bring the average LUFS value down a bit for the whole video maybe?

As an aside - I think my favourite video intro might be those 20 seconds at the start of the video for Janet Jackson - What Have You Done for Me Lately .

Cheers!

[Mike Senior]

"Is anyone really going to switch off the song at this point because of a pitch-slide? And even if they did, wouldn’t that listener’s song stream already count towards the charts by then anyway?"

Her team might possibly be one step ahead of you there.  I don't know for sure, but 'the internet' would suggest that YouTube counts a 'view' as as a user initiated stream watched for 30 seconds or more.  Adele doesn't actually start singing until after 1 minute and 50 seconds into the official video... 

Yeah -- that would make sense. It basically guarantees that anyone curious enough to find the video at all will certainly be curious enough to stay until the music starts. But of course there can't be such a cynical reason for that intro... Maybe it's so that you don't notice how much quieter the song is than the competition?

[mikej]

Maybe it's so that you don't notice how much quieter the song is than the competition?

Unless I've made a mistake (which is entirely possible) - I think it should actually sound louder than the competion?

Official Video: The opus audio stream is approx 12.9 LUFS-I. If we measure just the song section, it is approximately 12.5 LUFS-I.  On playback, YouTube normalizes the *whole file* to -14.0 LUFS.  The song section seems to be around 13.6 LUFS-I, so it's actually 0.4 LUFS-I louder than the competition.

Lyric Video: The opus audio stream is something like 9.5 LUFS-I, which gets normalized to 14.0 LUFS-I by YouTube on playback in the browser.

For comparison - Becky Hill - My Heart Goes.  The opus audio stream is around 7.9 LUFS-I, which gets normalized to 14.0 LUFS-I when played back via YouTube

Cheers!

Edit: I did this quite quickly, so assuming I haven't got my audio files muddled up, the attachment should show the YouTube normalised audio. The Adele official video audio is quite dynamic too, as well as being potentially subjectively louder. It's all quite clever really - so louder, more dynamic, along with possibly more streaming views!

[Mike Senior]

Maybe it's so that you don't notice how much quieter the song is than the competition?

Unless I've made a mistake (which is entirely possible) - I think it should actually sound louder than the competion?

Agreed -- sorry I was being a bit flippant and just referring to un-loudness-normalised playback. You're absolutely right.

[mikej]

No worries.

It gave me the excuse to look into it properly, as I'd always been curious about it. I'm still not sure if the added silence is actually a deliberate ruse to gain an advantage on youtube with increased volume and dynamics, or not, as I think it's quite clever. I certainly don't recall seeing anyone else investigate this, or reading any articles on the subject of youtube normalisation from this angle.

Cheers!

[mikej]

Hi!

(5 months later....)

I was just checking out Ian Shepherd's Mastering show that Mike mentioned in his recent Cambridge-MT mailshot, and happened to spot this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KftsSvcYjTM

Checking the dates... It looks like I was a day late and a dollar short with my thoughts.

Oh well. Anyway thought it was interesting enough to add here.

Cheers!