Tempo & rhythm
BPM
BPM — beats per minute — counts how many beats land in sixty seconds. It is the first number a DJ checks, because two tracks have to agree on tempo before anything else about them matters.
Measured in our catalog
128 BPM is the busiest shelf in the catalog with 36,548 tracks stored there, and 251,359 of 457,965 tracks with a detected tempo (54.9%) sit between 120 and 130.
That concentration is why a tempo move of two or three BPM barely changes what you can reach in house or techno, and why the same move at the edges of the range cuts your options in half.
| Tempo | Tracks | One bar | 32 bars |
|---|---|---|---|
| 128 BPM | 36,548 | 1.88 s | 60.0 s |
| 124 BPM | 31,821 | 1.94 s | 61.9 s |
| 125 BPM | 29,101 | 1.92 s | 61.4 s |
| 126 BPM | 27,967 | 1.90 s | 61.0 s |
| 122 BPM | 25,668 | 1.97 s | 63.0 s |
| 130 BPM | 24,430 | 1.85 s | 59.1 s |
| 123 BPM | 23,589 | 1.95 s | 62.4 s |
| 120 BPM | 21,263 | 2.00 s | 64.0 s |
Measured on 11 August 2026 across public tracks with a detected BPM, bucketed by round(bpm) — the same bucket a tempo page publishes under. Method: how we correct half-time BPM detection.
Why it matters
Tempo decides what you can physically mix. Most DJ software will pitch a track a few percent either way before it starts to sound wrong, so the tracks you can reach from where you are standing is a narrow window around your current BPM — and that window is worth far more in some parts of the catalog than others.
It also decides what a set feels like. A night that climbs four BPM over two hours reads as a build; the same four BPM in one transition reads as a mistake.
In Mixgraph
Every track page prints its BPM, and every suggestion is scored on how far the tempo has to travel to get there.
Frequently asked
What does BPM stand for?+
Beats per minute — the number of beats in sixty seconds. A track at 128 BPM plays 128 beats a minute, which in 4/4 is 32 bars.
Can you mix two tracks with different BPMs?+
Yes, and DJs do it constantly — but by less than people assume. Across 7,243 transitions sequenced by hand here, the median tempo gap is 1.0 BPM and 81.5% land within 3.
What BPM is house music?+
The house, techno and trance family in this catalog — 273,725 tracks — sits at a median of 126 BPM. Individual genres run tighter than that: deep house sits lower, hard techno considerably higher.
Related terms
Bar
A bar is four beats in 4/4 time — one full cycle of the kick pattern. DJs count in bars rather than seconds because a bar is the same length of music at any tempo, and seconds are not.
Phrase
A phrase is a block of bars a track is built from, usually 8, 16 or 32. Electronic music changes at phrase boundaries, so a mix that starts on one keeps both tracks structurally in step.
Half-time
Half-time is a groove that feels half as fast as it counts — the snare lands every other bar instead of every other beat. Drum & bass written at 174 BPM is felt, and often detected, at 87.
Beatmatching
Beatmatching is lining up two tracks so their beats land together — matching the tempo, then nudging the phase until the kicks coincide. It is the base skill every other mixing technique sits on top of.