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A friend of mine started using a music player and manager that can dynamically create playlists based on MP3 tags. He is happy with it, but the only thing missing for him (he works as a DJ sometimes) is the ability to automatically maintain all his songs BPM (beats per minute) information, and create those automatic playlists based on it.

As far as I've researched, the ID3v2 tag format allows BPM tagging, so the only thing missing here is getting another software that could automatically analyse a bunch of MP3 songs, identify their BPM's and tag their respective ID3v2 information accordingly. That being done, it would be very easy for him to play around and create his playlists.

I've made some research on it, and found some freeware and paid solutions. I'd just like to know if anyone has a great software suggestion for this.

Must-Haves:

  • update MP3 tags to include BPM info extracted from the files, while not losing other information already existing in those tags
  • run on Windows

Preferred features:

  • a GUI
  • batch-mode to process "marked files/directories"
  • free as in "free beer"
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  • I stumbled on this question while looking for something to trawl my music collection to find music to run by. Answer found, and upvote. Thanx
    – Mawg
    Commented May 31, 2020 at 9:51

6 Answers 6

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I use most of the time Traktor. Its features:

  • non-free (like beers) but:
  • commonly used among DJs (so you can expect the BPM to be accurate)
  • update MP3 tags to include BPM info extracted from the files, while not losing other information already existing in those tags
  • BPM with 3-decimal (BTW keep in mind that the ID3 BPM is an integer, while a decent music application will yield BPMs with at least 2-decimal).
  • run on Windows/Mac
  • batch-mode to process directories (and if you want including sub-directories)
  • a GUI
  • has key recognition too (vital for DJing purpose, I doubt building a set based on BPM only is a good idea)

enter image description here

(PS: this answer in its previous form was deleted from Feb 26 till March 12).

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Foobar2000 has a plugin called bpm auto analysis that will do bpm analysis - you'll just need to add the two dlls to the component folder.

  • can be run in portable mode, so you can run it in addition to your current music player
  • can be run as a batch job on selected songs in a playlist (or all songs on a playlist)
  • can be set to write to the bpm tag
  • can filter by bpm if you have a custom column set up

You can rightclick to see these options to do the beat detection, then save it.

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Here's the configuration window

I've created a new column (go to columns, more then set a custom column with the name 'bpm' and the pattern %bpm%) - this should let you sort through music of the same bpm if need be

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I would also add its a great music player, and I use it every day - its got a load of customisation (though not as I use it), supports things like ASIO and WASAPI through plugins and has a load of other cool features ;)

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  • A note about this answer: letting the plugin update the tags for adding the BPM also updates the date. I use the full release date of the album, but this reset my date tags to year only. I will therefore restore my library to the previous state, thus losing the BPM (passed too much time ordering my DB to bail on it now). I am therefore unconfident as to which other tags may be impacted. The plugin also has known bugs (sometimes twice the BPM, sometimes half). Nice solution in most cases though.
    – Chop
    Commented Aug 31, 2015 at 17:59
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BPM Counter (Abyssmedia) is free (as in you-know-what) and will chew through thousands of MP3s analyzing the BPM and (if you check the option) insert this into the BPM tag. Has a decent GUI, works on Windows 7, 8, and 10 (probably XP but I didn't test), and is very easy to operate. The only downside is that sometimes (maybe about 5-10% of the time) it's tripped up by more complicated rhythm tracks. I use this to find songs for walking the treadmill and have lost 25% of my formerly fat self-thanks in part to this program.

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Jaikoz Pro Music Tagger displays the bpm field so it can be easily edited. But more importantly for you it can match songs to MusicBrainz and then uses the MusicBrainz Id to look up the bpm from AcousticBrainz.

The advantage of this approach is the songs have already been analyzed and added to the AcousticBrainz database so it takes no additional time to get the bpm for your songs as they are matched. This is in contrast to the traditional approach of having to analyze each of your songs locally to calculate the bpm which either means the whole song has to be analyzed and that can take a long time, or only part of the song is analyzed meaning the bpm calculation is inaccurate.

The disadvantage of this approach is your song has to be matched to MusicBrainz AND a version of the song needs to already been analyzed and added to AcousticBrainz, there are currently approximately 2 million unique songs in the AcousticBrainz database. But there are plans to allow songs to be locally analyzed when they are not found in AcousticBrainz

Disclaimer:I am the Jaikoz developer

  • Can be configured to automatically update BPM and not other fields as long as songs matched to AcousticBrainz
  • Runs on Windows
  • Has a GUI (see screenshot)
  • Runs in a batch mode
  • Is not free

enter image description here

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  • Unfortunately AcousticBrainz ist discontinued.
    – david
    Commented Jun 6 at 22:01
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I'm a developer of the free BPM Counter that was mentioned above.

Few months ago, we released an improved version - tuneXplorer. It's much more faster and accurate.

  • update ID3 tags (yes)
  • run on Windows (yes)
  • GUI (yes)
  • batch mode with directories and subdirectories (yes)
  • free (no, but it's cheap)
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Mix Meister BPM is great if you have an iTunes library as you can pick the music folder and it will analyze all songs within. Simple and effective. https://download.cnet.com/MixMeister-BPM-Analyzer-Windows-98-Me-2000-XP/3000-2169_4-10290906.html

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