BeatGauge 4+

Works as advertised for music that is in a conventional Western 2/2 or 4/4 meter, but definitely has consistent and significant problems figuring out the tempo of some 6/8, 3/4, or more complex rhythms, anywhere from 30-50% off the actual BPM, not merely a double-time error. It does indeed run remarkably fast on bulk quantities of tracks, saving its results into your iTunes library instantly.

I downloaded BeaTunes free trial just to do the BPM analysis. I started a queue for my 5600 songs, and it told me 1.8 DAYS. Well alright then. I looked on BeaTunes website and found they recommended BeatGauge if all you want is quick BPM analysis. I took a look at the store, and saw it was $8 for what is essentially a one time use application. However, it had good reviews, and I wanted to build a better cycling playlist, so I figured why not.

WOW, this software is FAST. It blew through my 5600 songs in maybe 5 minutes? Even better, it assigns the BPM right back to iTunes so sorting by BPM and making a playlist is extremely easy. This will change my rides significantly and make sure I’m always pedaling the right cadence. I doubt I’ll ever use it again since all my songs are now analyzed, but still was worth the $8 bucks for all the playlists I’ll make and use I’ll get out of them.

This little app is great for people who are not good at hearing the BPM of a song but want to create a song list with a set range of BPMs. In my case, for running, I needed to know which of my iTunes were 88-90 BPM. I dragged my entire library of songs (over 2,000) onto BeatGuage and within minutes (I did not time it), they were all processed with as accurate of a BPM as I needed (pretty accurate since I compared them to a metronome). (iTunes provides a BPM view option and until you add that metadata with an app or manually, the column will normally be blank.)

Not its fault, BeatGuage cannot process older iTunes Digital Rights Management encoded files, but in my case those are few (and if you care, you can convert them to MP3s in iTunes anyway).