this series is very good I think. the first maybe 10 episodes is preferably liten to in order. Will listen to this last episode this nightshift. I very much do not understand why we should aim for -14LUFS, curious why Ian feels the same.
http://themasteringshow.com/episode-44/
yes, this is a great podcast, think I didn´t miss an episode.
About the -14 LUFS thing Ian is basically saying that since this is the level to which many streaming platforms like spotify loudness normalize the tracks to now many engineers tend to normalize all of their tracks to exactly -14 LUFS which is not always a good idea.
For example when you have a ballad like "stairway to heaven" with a long and quiet intro and a track like "back in black" rockin out at pretty much the same level from beginning to end and put these two on an album next to each other. What would happen when you normalize both to -14 LUFS is that the end part of "stairway" would be much louder than "back in black" which would be a weird to listen to and could probably be called a mastering-mistake. So we still should keep in mind what fits musically, especially when mastering for an album.
It may be not that much of a topic for a single song and aiming for -14 LUFS is certainly a good guideline. And certainly better than squashing your tracks like back in the day where the loudness war was in full swing provided that you use the now available full headroom / dynamic range of course.
But still the musical style should be kept in mind. A very dynamic jazz track for example would probably feel too constricted at -14 LUFS and -16 or -18 LUFS could be more appropriate here.