Understanding master tracks and loud wars

Loud wars refer to the trend of increasing your songs main output. There are loud wars everywhere you look. If your YouTube video is not as loud as someone else's, the instant you press play, the average listener thinks it is not as good. When you are watching TV and a commercial comes on, it becomes much louder than the program you are watching. Anything that is streamed online must be extremely loud because your average listener truly believes that louder is better. Most producers and artists have to join this battle—if you can't beat them, join them.

The only issue with mastering is that the definition of mastering has changed dramatically over the years and it is still changing today, depending on who you talk to. In the 60s and 70s, when records were made on vinyl, you wanted your whole album to be uniform and flow smoothly from track to track in sequential order. Albums were like a story. They were there to be enjoyed. Mastering engineers, at...