I had a chance to play with the Cadence app over the weekend, and here’s my review:

What it does:

The cadence app is a very simple app. All it does is scan you music and let you find songs that match a certain BPM you are looking for. This simplicity is also its greatest strength.
It’s very easy to use and finds songs by BPM so you can run or exercise to the BPM of your choosing.

Does it work?

Well, the answer to this is yes and no.
The most important question really, is it accurate? if it’s not, then the whole thing is a waste of time.

I’ve been studying songs’ BPM for a while now, and I’m usually pretty good at figuring out the bpm by just tapping to the beat. I don’t know if this is a testament to my skill or to that of the app, but in most cases (I’d say about 70-80% of the time), it’s spot on to my manual beats.

The problem starts when it comes to slower songs, or at least that’s where I spotted it.

It has a very hard time scanning and getting bpm right on a slow song and it makes a huge mess when it does.

One very clear example was Barry Manilow’s Mandy. it showed the bpm for that to be 219. if that was the case, running to Mandy would give me a heart attack because that is a VERY high BPM. but that’s not the correct bpm for that song.

The app is also limited by the size of your music collection. a typical iphone has usually around 16gb of storage. if you use all of its features, you will have some videos, some books, and some apps which don’t leave much for a very large music collection. if your collection is at around 1000 songs, which is a pretty good size, you’ll be limited to a small amount of songs for each bpm you choose. of course, you can expand the range, but the more you expand it, the less you need the app.

Overall though, I think this app does add value to a run. I would rate it at 3 out of 5.

Get the app here:

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