Read the music4dance blog entries about Ballroom. Read the music4dance blog entries about Swing. Read the music4dance blog entries about Tango. Read the music4dance blog entries about Wedding. 
Music
Find songs to dance a specific dance style. Menu Location: Music / Dances
Find the most recently added songs Find out what dance styles can be danced to a song. Menu Location: Music / Song Library
Start with a musical genre (or other tags) and find songs to dance a particular style. Menu Location: Music / Tags
Find wedding songs and match them with dance styles. Menu Location: Music / Wedding
Find songs that match competition tempo ranges. Vote on what style you would dance to any song in our catalog. Tag songs to create your own ways of making song lists.
Tools
Use our tempo counter tool to find the tempo of a song and match it to dance styles. Menu Location: Tools / Tempo Counter
Explore relationships between the meter and tempi of different dance styles and find songs that match. Menu Location: Tools / Tempi (Tempos)
Use our advanced search tool to find songs to dance to based one tempo, tags, dance style, and more.
Info
About music4dancePosts that are about the music4dance.net site features, excluding features that are specifically about searching for music.[Read more]
The Two Questions that Inspired Music4DanceAs a beginning ballroom dancer there were two questions that kept coming up...[Read more]
Question 1: I’m learning to Cha Cha, where is some great music for practicing?So how do I do that? Dance generally co-evolves with music, so to get a very traditional song...[Read more]
Question 2: What dance styles can I dance to my favorite song(s)?One of the things that amazes me about the best dance teachers...[Read more]
Let's tag some songsThe tag editor is the first of a number of features that I'm planning that will enable you to customize your music4dance experience...[Read more]
Quality over Quantity?One of the things that I’m struggling with ... is the pull between finding lots of recommendations for songs to dance to against the desire that those recommendations being in some sense ‘good.’[Read more]
EchoNest Integration - Loads of new tempo, meter and other information to help you find music to dance toI’ve cross indexed the music4dance catalog with the EchoNest database and exposed some new features...[Read more]
How do I find the latest music added to music4dance?I'm adding new music just about every week, so if you're a frequent visitor to music4dance how can you see what is new..[Read more]
Share Your Favorite SearchesHave you found a particularly useful or exciting way to search for music on the music4dance site? Just for instance...[Read more]
Please Support www.music4dance.netWith a catalog of over twenty-five thousand songs cross-referenced by dozens of dance styles and hundreds of tags, we've built a real treasure trove of music to explore...[Read more]
Check out our new Bonus Content FeatureAs of this writing the publicly visible music4dance catalog contains just over twenty seven thousand songs. But the underlying index ...[Read more]
Announcing a music4dance Bug BountySoftware bugs are miserable things in any context. But when you have a small project like music4dance where there are so many external dependencies...[Read more]
Create a Spotify PlaylistOne of my initial goals with music4dance was to be able to create playlists to dance to. I can finally say that I’ve got this working in a way that is close to my original vision...[Read more]
Ask music4dance: Can I export music4dance playlists to play locally?I’ve been thinking about the concept of music4dance since long before streaming services like Spotify existed, so the idea of generating playlists...[Read more]
Tempo Counter (Revisited)I just rewrote the Tempo tool for the music4dance site as part of the current effort to update the site. In the process I went back...[Read more]
Playing with Dance TemposAs I’ve mentioned before, one of the things that I find helpful is to have access to a tempo counter that allows me to tap a beat and both measure the tempo and show me the dance style...[Read more]
How do you like to see lists of music to dance to?One of the core features of music4dance is to be able to list songs for dancing ... just roll out what I've got on some of the pages and leave the old stuff in place on others. That will give you the opportunity to see them both and compare and give feedback...[Read more]
Who else likes to dance to this song (and what do they dance to it)?As I browse the music4dance catalog and find a song I like, it’s nice to be able to see who added it and use that as a way to find other songs that I might like. To this end...[Read more]
New Feature: Adding Songs to the music4dance CatalogI'm excited to announce that I've nearly completed a feature that will let you add songs to the music4dance catalog. I've documented the feature here... [Read more]
What is the difference between adding a song to Favorites and voting on a Song's Danceability?I realize that I still haven't made it easy to understand the nuances of a couple of important features. So I made some changes in terminology and behavior and I'm interested to know if this makes more sense...[Read more]
New Feature: More ways to see what's going on at music4danceOne of my goals for music4dance is to build a system that people can use to share their knowledge of partner dance music with others. I probably spent too much time early on in this project...[Read more]
Ask music4dance: Why am I listed as Anonymous?A few months ago I started working on a set of features with the goal of making music4dance more personalized. ... realized that almost all members of the music4dance community have chosen the privacy setting to not share their profile...[Read more]
Ask music4dance: Should you add a Single Swing Dance category?Arne had another great question: I see Single Swing being danced a lot these days. Should music4dance add another swing category? Is Single Swing...[Read more]
New Feature: Saving and Sharing SearchesSearching for music to dance to is what music4dance is all about ... Another thing that I hope music4dance will be used for is to share those songs with other dancers...[Read more]
Beta Feature: Export to a fileA number of the most active members of the music4dance.net community have requested the ability to download all or part of the song database. My sense is that this has generally been with the intent tag songs in one’s local catalog with the dance style...[Read more]
Would you like more content on music4dance.net? If so, what kind?Brad’s comment on my Single Swing post made me realize that I’ve done a bunch of research on dancing and dance music that I haven’t effectively conveyed on the site or the blog. He pointed me to a site that listed tempo values for Single Swing...[Read more]
Post #100: Music4Dance Turns TenMy first blog post was in July 2014. I had early versions of the website up and running for about a year before starting the blog, so the site is just about ten years old...[Read more]
Introducing the music4dance technical blogWhen I started the music4dance blog nearly a decade ago, I considered including a technical component by writing about the challenges of building and maintaining the site. A good friend talked me out of doing that...[Read more]
What Happens When a Song is Danced at Different Tempos?Sometimes, a song can be a perfectly good Bolero when heard one way but a Salsa when counting the music differently. Another example is ...[Read more]
New Feature: More Spotify ExportsOne of the more active members of the music4dance.net community filed a bug report recently, noting that he tried to create a Spotify Playlist, but it came up empty. The playlist was...[Read more]
Playlists for Ballroom DJs?I recently heard from a member of the music4dance.net community who hosts a community social ballroom dance for which he builds a playlist. He uses music4dance to find song ideas...[Read more]
Searching for MusicPosts that are about searching for songs, excluding those about special occasions.[Read more]
What if I want to build a list of songs that are tagged as either Bolero or Rumba?There are a bunch of different reasons that you might want to build lists of songs that are more sophisticated than just the songs that can be danced to a specific style...[Read more]
I am learning the Foxtrot, where can I find some music?The quick answer is to just click this link where you will find a list of over a thousand songs...[Read more]
Are there songs that you never want to dance to again?I have been adding capabilities to the music4dance advanced search control as they are suggested and as time permits. And it got a bit out of control, so to speak...[Read more]
What if I just want to search for songs on music4dance like I do on Google?One of the things that I've had a lot of fun with is building a sophisticated search engine where...[Read more]
Search like Google Part II: Autocomplete, Filter by Dance Style and SortingAuto-complete is something everyone expects when searching...[Read more]
Search like Google Part III: Advanced Search - The Best of Both Worlds?I've just updated the music4dance site with the remaining features for our search beta...[Read more]
Finding the latest music on music4dance (take 2)There are enough people that visit music4dance regularly that I thought...[Read more]
Music for Dance Through the DecadesOne of the ways that I like to search for music is by era. At least as far as twentieth-century American music goes...[Read more]
Ask music4dance: Why don't you have info about musical genres like you do about dance styles?I searched on your webpage, I could not find info about genre Pop. Can you show me info about genre Pop...[Read more]
Ask music4Dance: How do I find a "Pop Rock" song to dance a Slow Foxtrot to?This is another question that I’ve seen a bunch of variations on over the years. I love Big Band music and grew up playing Basie and Goodman in Jazz bands...[Read more]
New Feature: General SearchI've finally added a feature that should really be a part of any good website. A general search of the entire site is available by typing one or more keywords in the search box in the upper right and clicking search. Try it out, and let me know what you think...[Read more]
New Feature: Searching for a Song from Soptify or ITunesA new member of the music4dance community, Arne, pointed out that he expected to be able to search by Spotify Id. Furthermore, he figured out how to do that...[Read more]
New Feature: Filter by Song LengthIf you're trying to get a playlist together for a social dance, it would be nice for the songs to be a reasonable length for your audience. I realize that DJ tools will...[Read more]
New Feature: Searching for only the songs that someone has voted forArne pointed out the other day that it would be useful to be able to build a playlist for just the songs that he had voted for dancing Cha Cha. I scratched my head a bit...[Read more]
New Dance: Single SwingI’ve added Single Swing as a dance style that can be searched on and voted for in the . While I think of this dance as a short-cut to use when I want to dance East Coast Swing to faster Jive or Lindy-Hop music, I’ve received enough feedback from the community...[Read more]
New Feature: Improved Text SearchingI've always been a bit dissatisfied with how I set up the Artist field in music4dance. A free text field for the artist generally works, but it doesn't capture everything I'd like...Last week, I decided to spend a little while seeing what I could do to make a worthwhile improvement in a short time...[Read more]
I’m a ballroom dancer. Can I find practice songs that are at competition tempo? (Revisited)Absolutely. Go to the Ballroom page and check it out. The page is accessible from the “Music” menu...[Read more]
Partner Dance Songs in Broadway MusicalsBroadway soundtracks are a rich source of fun songs to dance to, but even with this custom search, I don’t think the existing music4dance database does it justice. What songs from musicals inspire you to dance?[Read more]
How to find the most popular songs to dance to dance toThe core mission of music4dance is to help you find music to dance to, whether you’re a ballroom dancer, social dancer, or really any kind of dancer. Sometimes I look at the site and say...[Read more]
New Feature: Searching on songs with a minimum number of dance votesSeveral folks have been frustrated with the number of songs in the music4dance catalog that only have one or two votes for a particular dance style. This limitation doesn’t matter for many searches...[Read more]
Special OccasionsSearching for music related to special occasions (Holidays, Weddings, etc.)[Read more]
Holiday Music for Partner DancingIt is that time of year when dancers are looking for holiday music for dancing...[Read more]
Holiday Music for Partner Dancing (Take 2)It's that time of year again - people are searching for holiday music for showcases and holiday party dances...[Read more]
Dance PrideEach year Spotify does a number of fun playlists in support of Pride weekend. With this being the 50th anniversary of the riots... [Read more]
Holiday Music for Partner Dancing 2019And yet again, it’s that time of year when dancers and DJs are looking for holiday music for routines and holiday dance parties. In my third annual installment...[Read more]
Are you looking for Halloween Music to dance to?Halloween is almost here and yet again I am late setting up something for Halloween related playlists. In past years, I've just let this go since it feels like it's too late to get something together when I start thinking about it...[Read more]
Holiday Music for Partner Dancing 2020On a normal year, this would be a bit late for my normal Holiday Music blog post. But if you're like me, you're not planning to participate in a holiday dance party in the middle of a pandemic. So it's more of a case of thinking about past and future years...[Read more]
Holiday Music for Partner Dancing 2021It's the time of year again to talk about Holiday Music....[Read more]
Valentine's Day Edition: Love Songs that We Love to Dance toI’ve been making an effort to tag songs and write sophisticated searches to find good songs for holiday dances. The music4dance catalog is set up for this kind of search. Not only that, but I’ve always really enjoyed doing exhibition pieces for holiday parties...[Read more]
Holiday Music for Partner Dancing 2022It’s the time of year again to talk about Holiday Music. For the second year in a row, I haven’t done any new work on the Holiday Music page...[Read more]
We’d like to dance a "real" partner dance as the first dance at our wedding (Part I: We already chose our song)Wedding season is upon us, and one of the things that come with weddings is receptions with first dances, father/daughter dances, mother/son dances, mother/daughter dances, and any other variation you can think of. I think it’s extra special when those dances are recognizably partner dances...[Read more]
We’d like to dance a "real" partner dance as the first dance at our wedding (Part II: We already chose our dance)Last time I wrote about how music4dance can help you find a dance to match the song you’d like to dance to for your first dance (or other wedding dances). This time, I’ll cover how the site can help you find a song if you already know what dance style you want to dance. Before I dig into that, I’d like to repeat that your local dance studio and your wedding DJ are both excellent sources of ideas...[Read more]
Are you ready for your Halloween Dance?Whether you’re a DJ getting your playlist together or a performer looking for that perfect song to craft a routine to, our Halloween collection is a great place to start...[Read more]
Ballroom Christmas Music (2023)?Christmas and other holiday dances are just around the corner, so it’s time to take another look at music ideas to partner dance to. I haven’t made any major changes to the Holiday Dance Pages this year, but there is plenty of new music to browse...[Read more]
Halloween Ballroom Music 2024Halloween is fast approaching, and I'm updating the music4dance Halloween catalog to include more partner dance Halloween music. I've pulled some...[Read more]
Holiday Music for Ballroom and Partner Dancing 2024Christmas and other holiday dances are just around the corner, so it’s time to take another look at music ideas to dance to. As of this writing, we have 1759 songs cataloged, up from 1536 songs last year and close to doubling...[Read more]
Music and DancePosts that are about music as it relates to dance and dance as it relates to music.[Read more]
The Pink Martini SolutionNot all artists are created equal when it comes to creating dance-able music. For instance...[Read more]
The “Dancing with the Stars” SolutionI learned to dance in part because Dirty Dancing made me want to be Johnny Castle...[Read more]
Top Songs of 2015 -- And what to dance to them.What better than a top 100 list to end the year? I've taken the Spotify top 100 songs of 2015 (for the USA) and ...[Read more]
What are Your Favorite Song to Dance Bachata?Since I’m going to be taking Bachata lessons for the first time starting next week...[Read more]
What are your favorite Prince songs for partner dancing?I, like many, am mourning and listening to Prince's music. Over and over again...[Read more]
Do Dancers Think in Eights?I was tickled to hear Nigel Lythgoe talk a little about choreographing tap on a recent episode of So You Think You Can Dance...[Read more]
Farewell to Rio 2016, but we'll always have The SambaNow that the 2016 Olympics are over and the Paralympics are wrapping up,[Read more]
Dancing With The Stars, RevisitedI use this show and other as a source for new music, but that biases things...[Read more]
What is a Fake Waltz?I was recently asked why there are songs tagged as Waltz in the music4dance catalog that are in 4/4 time...[Read more]
Musicians for DancersOne of the things I enjoy most about the music4dance project is when I get feedback from people who have found the site useful...[Read more]
Tango, Argentine Tango, Ballroom Tango, Oh My!I just took a beginning Argentine Tango class and really enjoyed the experience. I’ve had some experience[Read more]
Ask music4dance: Why is the tempo that you're listing for Ricky Martin's "Casi Un Bolero" wrong?I’ve seen a number of questions recently about why information on the site is wrong. So I’ll start with one of the easier ones, which I’ve seen a number of variations on...[Read more]
Ask music4dance: Why is a song tagged with the wrong dance style?Variations on that question make up a significant amount of the feedback I get here at music4dance. The first answer to these questions is that music4dance is crowd-sourced. So someone...[Read more]
Translating how dance teachers countSomething came up the other day as I was talking to a friend who just took his first social dance class. He has a musical background and is used to hearing and counting beats as a musician. So he got a little obsessed and distracted with figuring out the translation between what he was hearing in the music and what he was hearing from the dance teacher...[Read more]
Ask music4dance: Why is the tempo range you list for West Coast Swing wrong?A West Coast Swing DJ contacted me and kindly let me know that the tempo range I had listed for West Coast Swing was “entirely wrong.” The average tempos that she plays are between 90 and 110 bpm, while I listed a tempo range of 112-128 bpm...[Read more]
Western Partner Dances and Line Dances?One of the comments on my last post asked: A lot of our dance groups over here love to dance the partnered dance sea shells The song “Blue night” by Michael learns to Rock sings the song they dance to. Is there a list on your data base of similar songs...[Read more]
ReviewsPosts that are about music as it relates to dance and dance as it relates to music.[Read more]
Feel the BeatIf you want to be able to enjoy partner dancing and look good while doing it, you have to be able to dance to the music...[Read more]
World of DanceHave you seen the new TV series World of DanceL? If you have any appreciation of dance you should really...[Read more]
Book Review: The meaning of TANGOThis is a fun book for Tango dancers of all types. The book is very centered around traditional Argentine Tango and does an excellent job of...[Read more]
Beautiful Dancemusic4dance is all about the relationship between music and dance. And naturally, on the website and the blog, I tend to concentrate on the musical aspect...But every once in a while it's nice to step back and remember that dance is visually beautiful... [Read more]
Book Review: Hear the Beat, Feel the MusicAs anyone who has spent any time reading my blog or interacting with my website should know by now, I’m very passionate about music, dance and the relationship between the two...[Read more]
Book Review: Partner Dance SuccessThis book is a great collection of practical advice for anyone new to partner dancing. The author is a professional drummer turned social dancer who brings experience from building skill as a musician to the dance floor...[Read more]
Dance in Science Fiction and FantasyThe music4dance project is an expression of the overlap of three of my lifelong interests – music, partner dancing, and programming. Reading Science Fiction and Fantasy is another life-long pass time that precedes both my entry into computer science and my introduction to ballroom dance...[Read more]
Dance as LanguageI was delighted to find that the folks at the Rough Translation podcast produced an episode called May We Have This Dance? For those who haven't heard of it...[Read more]
Book Review: Swingin' at the Savoy: The Memoir of a Jazz DancerSwingin’ at the Savoy is a beautiful memoir of one of the greatest Lindy Hop dancers of all time. Ms. Miller was not only one of the dancers that defined Lindy Hop, but as Lindy Hop faded for a while post World War II, she launched a career as a Jazz Dancer....[Read more]
Book Review: How to Read Music in 30 DaysWhile dancers definitely don’t need to be able to read music, it is helpful to be able to dig up sheet music for a song and understand the meter and tempo markings. This can act as a sanity check against what you hear, tap out in a tempo counter, or find by just stepping out the dance. How to Read Music in 30 Days...[Read more]