What is BPM?
Also called: beats per minute, tempo
BPM (beats per minute) is the unit for musical tempo: how many beats occur in one minute. A song at 120 BPM has two beats every second.
BPM is what DJs match when mixing, what producers set in their DAW, and what drummers hear in a click track. Genres tend to cluster in typical ranges, for example house music commonly sits around 120 to 130 BPM, but there is a lot of overlap.
Tempo detection can be ambiguous by a factor of two. A song felt at 85 BPM can also be counted at 170 BPM, depending on whether you count the half time or double time pulse, so tempo detectors and people sometimes disagree by exactly half or double.
Knowing the BPM also lets you calculate timings that sound in time with the song, such as delay and reverb times or the length of a bar.
Example
At 90 BPM, one beat lasts 60 / 90 = 0.667 seconds, and a bar of 4/4 lasts about 2.67 seconds.
Put it to work
Tap along to find the BPM of any song, free in your browser.
Tap Tempo (BPM Tapper)