BPM for your iTunes songs
I just bought a iPod Nano and an Nike Sports Kit for it. I’m going to use it for running and bicycling, and I’m thrilled by it already. A full report coming soon!
So when I heard about Tangerine, an application that scans my iTunes library and figures out the BPM – Beats Per Minute – on all my tracks, I downloaded it immediately.
Perfect for running
I would use it like this:
- Scan all my tunes, and get BPM for all of them
- Make a test run, and figure out which pace that fits the running I’m doing
- Make playlists that starts at a certain pace, and speed things up at the end
- Or make playlists that mix paces, slow at the start, then faster, slower again etc.
Tangerine does all this. Tags my tunes with the right BPM. Make playlists. Very cool!
Except that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t find my iTunes music library. It may be because I have an Norwegian version of OS X, so the music folder is called “Musikk”. But other apps using the iTunes music library finds it, so it’s just a guess.
Tangerine is still in Beta, and others reports having the same problems as I do. Others tell that it works flawlessly. I’m really looking forward to the next version and hope that it will find my music library and start tagging it.
Do it manually (or maybe not…)
In the meantime, I’m using the bpmWidget. It works like this: Download and install (as a widget). Start a song in iTunes, and tap the widget with the beat for some seconds. Then hit the small note icon to copy that BPM value to the current song playing in iTunes. Repeat 8 000 times for all your songs. Sigh… Tangerine! Where’s that next version?!
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Hi,
Thank you for blogging about Tangerine! We would like to send you a license for Tangerine! but we couldn’t locate your email address.
Please contact us. Thanks.
I need to find-out how to file my intire music library, about 31.000 songs with their respcetive BPM
Tangerine does that, Raimundo. Just run it, and it analyzes all your songs.
I don’t think people realize what type of innovation this actually is. This can essentially detect what “mood” you’re in and play the necessary tracks for the right situation. I can think of a hundred different applications for this type of technology.
This is great. But It is wrong quite often, especially in electronic genres of music where a dj can potentially use this.
I use MixMeister BPM Analyser, it is a free download for PC and MAC. You just drag your entire music folder into it, and it calculates all the bpm’s for you. It will then save them to the music file so that they come up on your itunes…..super easy.
It may take a couple of hours to go through your entire library of music, but it sooo worthwhile for running/exercising etc.
Interesting. I’ll check it out!
Hi,
That MixMeister BPM Analyser really works perfectly. It is only necesary to convert bought songs to MP3 and after conversion play each song at least once to update BPM info in iTunes and than just choose your criteria when creating new playlist. thanks a lot for you help Nickie and Oyvind
Hi,
I too used Mixmeister and it works great i is 90% right. The trouble I have that it only works with mp3 files, but have of my songs are AAC files. Does anybody has a solution for that. thanks
I have also had that problem with MixMeister. It’s quite annoying as most of my music collection in iTunes are AAC. Would be great if they could fix that.