The Joy of BPM Calculation

I've been slowly but surely organizing my mp3 collection to streamline the process of moving it to my iPod, which should be en route from Apple. (Again, I'm slow to jump on bandwagons. My imaginary friend Mia at Popgadget undoubtedly had a portable digital music player in oh, say, 1999. By the way, Mia is imaginary in the sense that while we've had many, many conversations over the course of a year and a half or so, we've never met in person. But I'm sure that if she fell down in a forest when no one was around, she'd make a sound. Probably a sound made by some kind of technology prototype that would automatically put her back on her feet, or something, but a sound nonetheless.)

Anyway, back to the organization of my mp3s. In the process of editing tags and such, I noticed a sad little field in the tag for "BPM" that was always blank. Then I decided that the BPM would be a useful tidbit of information on each mp3, particularly if I'm setting up a workout playlist or something. But tapping out the BPM and calculating it myself would take the rest of my natural life, plus the time I've spent procrastinating instead of writing my thesis, squared. And that's a wee bit more time than I'd like to spend on something like that.

But all is not lost! I found a free BPM calculator at Mixmeister that seems to be fairly accurate and calculates a whole batch at once. It's busily doing my 1980s folder as we speak, and I am just full of glee. Sadly.

I should mention that in order to download the free calculator, you have to give them an email address for their "newsletter". It's okay, it makes you feel like you didn't waste your time creating that free Yahoo account to use for junk mail only.

And, it's been bumfuzzled by J. Geils Band's "Centerfold". Hm.

Edited to add ... ah ha! It just doubled the "Centerfold" BPM. Apparently it does that on occasion ... calculates by the wrong beat. I can deal with that ... I'm very good at dividing by two.