HERC's TOOLBOX: Song BPM [website]

In the late 80s, HERC's interest in music took him deeper into the modern dance music of the time.  He began assembling non-stop mixes on 60 minute cassettes (one 30 minute mix per side) and selling them for $10 a pop with the money going to feed his ever-growing music buying habits. After he quit selling mixtapes, HERC subscribed to several remix services (Mixx-It, Funkymix, Ultimix, Hot Tracks to name a few) and built a nice little library of dance and hip-hop remixes.

To stay knowledgeable and up to date, he also subscribed to two DJ oriented magazines: Dance Music Report (which ended its run in 1992), Dance Music Authority and Mobile Beat.  Both magazines featured news, reviews and charts as well as tips, tricks and ads.  Through those ads HERC acquired even more dance music.  And he learned about the technique of harmonic mixing. HERC began applying the harmonic methods and principles to his own mixtapes and mix CDs.

HERC continues to harmonically mix his own personal CD comps to this day.  In order to do this, he needs two pieces of information: the BPM and key of a song.  To find out the BPM of any given song, he employs one of two practices:

• he Googles the song title and the search term "BPM" - there are at least a dozen BPM databases that return results and HERC has no favorites
• he uses the free stand-alone MixMeister BPM analyzer or loads the song into his MixMeister Studio software

Last week, he noticed one of the results in his Google search was new to him: songbpm.com  The site is cleanly designed and super easy to use. Now he has a favorite.  Search results even come with Spotify links.  The site is credited as a "Blendist cocktail" and links to another Blendist site, one that HERC uses quite a bit: jog.fm. (Well actually, as a walker, HERC uses walk.jog.fm.)  Like a lot of the other cool music related sites and apps, all three sites use data from The Echo Nest.

How do you determine a song's BPM?  Let HERC know in the comments.