I believe they are concerned about the Loudness War, where songs released over the past 10+ years have been mastered to be as close to 0db as possible. This wa

I believe they are concerned about the Loudness War, where songs released over the past 10+ years have been mastered to be as close to 0db as possible. This was done for decades by radio stations applying strong compression, because they knew that someone going from frequency to frequency was more likely to stop on a station that sounded loud, implying that they were getting a stronger signal and could listen to it longer before they drove out of range. The longer the listener stayed on their station, the more ad impressions. But then the record labels started doing it and so even buying a CD meant you were getting a lower-quality album. A few years ago Apple mandated the use of their Sound Check tool that penalizes iTunes Radio songs that are all-loud, all-the-time. And it sounds (no pun intended) that Spotify and other services followed their lead. Google cache of article because the site is unresponsive: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P4y5VeSZJc0J:www.digitalmusicnews.com/2013/10/28/itunesloudness/&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P4y5VeS...