SATCHMO

Yes, it is an infamously loud record, but being released in 1973 before the great compression battles really got started, the loudness that the listener perceives is a result of the producer (Iggy Pop himself) pushing the overall track levels to the point of clipping the signal, and not the result of the album being mastered with a huge amount of compression, which is what the OP is talking about in his original post.

In the case of Loudness Wars, which is really a compression war, the resulting loudness is usually not from any sort creative decision or input from the musicians themselves who are creating the music , but a marketing technique used by record companies so that an album or song gets noticed or stays at the forefront of a listener's attention.

Badlittlekitten

I'm not clued up on the technical side of production, mastering etc. and wasn't really aware of this. So record companies actually do this to gain listeners attention? Seems like really dumb logic on their part.

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SATCHMO

Yes, this is something that record companies do very consistently and It's been a steady and increasing progression since the late 70's, but the original post of this thread does a far better job of explaining it than I ever could.