On the loudness tip..  When mastering, I personally shoot for about -12db RMS. That makes it close enough to commercially loud, you can listen to it in a car with no problem, but still allows a fair amount of dynamic range. For most of the zeros, this was pretty much the normal commercial level. Now it seems that people are shooting for -9db RMS and above.. which is ok if you are doing aggressive dubstep/tech house (skrillex's album clocks in at about -7RMS for the whole album), but completely unnecessary.