Free · Nothing recorded · No microphone
Venue music tempo checker
Most venues never find out what tempo their room is actually running at, so the same playlist plays through a quiet opening and a lunch rush. Tap along to whatever is playing and see how it lines up with each moment of your day.
What tempo is your room running at?
Play the music in your venue and tap along with the beat.
Across your trading day
These moments run one after another, so one playlist rarely fits them all.
- Opening70–90 BPM
First hours, room should feel calm
Browsing pace. Above 100 BPM in a quiet hour reads as a cue to hurry.
- Lunch rush100–120 BPM
Queues and fast table turnover
Faster tempo suits queues and busier service.
- Afternoon70–90 BPM
Steady trade, people working or talking
Back to browsing pace once the peak clears.
Where these ranges come from
These are starting ranges, not a formula. Tempo sets the pace of a room, but volume, genre, vocal density and the acoustics of the space all pull on the same result — which is why the honest use of this tool is to change one block for a week and compare the room, not to chase a number.
- Milliman, 1982, Journal of Marketing — Slower music changed customer movement in a supermarket.
- Caldwell & Hibbert, 2002, Psychology & Marketing — Tempo shifted service rhythm and time spent in a restaurant.
Venue-specific ranges are the ones already published in our guides: café or coffee shop, retail shop, salon or barbershop, aesthetic clinic, pilates, yoga or massage studio.
Common questions
- What BPM should background music be in a café or shop?
- As a starting point, roughly 70–90 BPM suits browsing, consultation and quiet hours, and roughly 100–120 BPM suits queues, lunch rushes and busier service. These are ranges to test in your own room, not a fixed rule — tempo interacts with volume, genre and the acoustics of the space.
- Does music tempo really change how customers behave?
- The research is suggestive rather than a promise. Ronald Milliman’s 1982 supermarket study found slower music changed how customers moved, and Caldwell and Hibbert’s 2002 work found tempo shifted service rhythm. Both are reasons to test your own room, not evidence that one BPM range works everywhere.
- What is dayparting?
- Dividing the trading day into audio blocks so the music changes with the room instead of staff acting as an in-house DJ. A café might open slow, lift through the lunch rush, then settle back down. Some venues need zones rather than a schedule — a clinic’s reception and treatment rooms run at the same time, so they need different music simultaneously.
- How do I measure the BPM of what is playing now?
- Tap the button on this page in time with the beat. After four taps it shows a reading and refines as you keep going. It uses the timing of your taps only — nothing is recorded and no microphone is used.
Other free tools
- Music licence letter decoderPlain-language read on who is contacting you, what they can and cannot do, and the three routes open to you.Open →
- Music licence cost calculatorPublished tariff figures by venue type, with the collecting society's own examples and the date we checked them.Open →
- Can I play this in my business?Two verdicts, not one: whether the provider’s own terms allow it, and whether your country’s societies still need paying.Open →
- Calculadora de tarifas SGAE 2026Tarifa por metros cuadrados del Libro de Tarifas SGAE 2026, con las tres tarifas que publica la SGAE y sin IVA.Open →
Tempo is a starting point, not a sales lever — treat any range here as something to test in your own room. If you would rather the schedule ran itself, Sonosfera changes the music by time of day automatically: see pricing.