BPM Detection in Linux

Doing a lot of cardio workouts, it is really good to have music that beats to your rhythm. The pulsating sound gives you energy and pace, both excellent ways to make a good workout, great, and to make time pass faster. When I get new music on my player (a Sansa Clip+ - the almost perfect player for a Sporty Spice) life is good. An hour of running is gone before I even know it, and when I look at the calorie count, I feel like Michael Phelps freshly crowned with Olympic gold.

At first I would stumble across music that matched the pace. I do lots of different kinds of workouts, so certain songs would work with different segments. I have a running pace, a hiking pace, a mountain climbing pace, a cycling pace, a weight lifting pace, a spinning pace, etc. I would get used to certain songs in certain parts, but that would get old, fast.

Then I got used to counting beats. I would look at the big clock in the gym and count beats for 15 seconds. That would give me a general idea of what I could use a song for. My favorite spinning song, for instance, was "Hazel Eyes," so anything that had the same beat count would be a good replacement.

Then I started getting bored with this random approach and realized I had a library of hundreds of CDs ripped onto my computers. I just had to detect the beat automatically and I would be able to simply do a lookup search for a specific BPM count and get all possible results.