Mike Dean Comments on Apple Music's "Mastered for iTunes" Guidelines

By now, we’ve all heard about the Loudness Wars and the constant battle between finding the balance between audio quality and loudness that mastering engineers have to face. The “Mastered for iTunes” guidelines have been in existence for three years already, but Apple Music is about to take that to another level. Legendary Houston producer Mike Dean spoke with The FADER about the Loudness Wars recently, sharing:

“They’re putting a limit on how loud you can be. It’s going to be like the movies soon. The sound on movies can’t go over a certain level. Same with TV. There’s written-in-stone TV levels that you can hit, volume levels. That’s why some commercials are louder than others: they take all the bass out and turn up all the midrange and it just sounds too loud. If they put a limit on how loud you can be, people will start manipulating sh*t to hack that. It’s gonna make people make sh*ttier music.”

Not long after the interview, Dean took to Twitter to revise his statements, announcing that he has done more research on the topic. Read his tweets below, as well as one on his defense of the War posted over a week ago.

@tmeyeratplay @thefader @iTunes I am now a mastered for I tunes approved mastering engineer. After more research its a good thing.

— MIKE DEAN! #MWA (@therealmikedean) June 18, 2015

@tmeyeratplay @thefader @iTunes it's up to the engineer to make it sound the same as your mix. I think I can follow suite and turnup.

— MIKE DEAN! #MWA (@therealmikedean) June 18, 2015

@Maestro1021 ye3a fuck that i was against loudness wars then i joined and won higher bit rates give us higher clip levels

— MIKE DEAN! #MWA (@therealmikedean) June 9, 2015