This articulates and explains clearly something I have struggled with for years:

http://funl.blogspot.com/2007/06/loudness-war.html

What a great article. I remember mixing and mastering the Urban Rust and Jubilant Dogs CDs and being frustrated at my seeming inability to match the volume of, say, They Might Be Giants' John Henry, which has always struck me as a singularly loud, monolithic slab of continuous volume.

The problem comes when a J. Dogs or UR fan who is also a TMBG fan (someone like me, for example) is listening to their iPod (okay, I don't have or want an iPod) on shuffle and they turn up for something I've produced, then get blown away when some latter day TMBG comes on next. Youch! This is exactly why I don't have an iPod. I'm still waiting for the great leap forward where this problem will somehow be solved.