What BPM is
BPM (beats per minute) counts the beats in one minute. A 128 BPM track has 128 beats a minute, a little over two per second. DJs need BPM to beatmatch two tracks and to plan a set that builds or holds its pace.
Most genres sit in a familiar range:
| Genre | Typical BPM |
|---|---|
| House, tech house | 120–128 |
| Techno | 125–140 |
| Trance | 132–140 |
| Dubstep | 140 (feels like 70) |
| Drum & bass | 170–175 |
| Hip-hop | 85–100 |
Method 1: tap along
Open any tap tempo tool, tap a key along with the kick for 10–15 seconds, and it averages out a BPM. Quick, nothing to install.
The downside: being off by 1–2 BPM is normal. Good enough to tell fast from slow, not good enough to hold two tracks together through a long blend.
Method 2: read it from the tags or filename
Tracks bought from a music store usually come with BPM in the tags. Files from other sources are often missing it, or wrong: some carry the original's BPM while the file is a much faster remix.
Useful when the source is reliable. Don't trust it blindly.
Method 3: software that analyzes your library
Software listens to the drums and the repeating cycle of the whole track and calculates the BPM. It's the only way to handle thousands of tracks, and it's usually far more accurate than tapping.
The usual trap: double and half
Every detector sometimes reads 87 as 174, or 140 as 70. The beat can be counted on the strong beats or on every beat, and both are "right" mathematically. Drum & bass and dubstep get hit the most.
The fix is simple: compare with the genre. A dubstep track that reads 70 BPM is the 140 you want.
Two other cases make BPM hard to measure:
- Tracks that change tempo partway, usually in the intro or outro.
- Live-played music without a click track, where the tempo drifts.
Faster with TaxonomyDJ
TaxonomyDJ detects BPM, key, and Camelot for your whole library, over 100 tracks a minute, free and with no track limit. On 884 real tracks with the BPM in the filename, it got the BPM right 98.9% of the time (within 0.5 BPM).
Once you have BPM, right-click a track to filter tracks with a similar BPM and pick the next one in seconds. To write BPM into tags or filenames, use the batch tag editor (Premium).
Read next: how to find the key of a song and changing tempo without changing key.