Beats Per Minute – Unit of measurement used to measure the tempo of a piece of music

(Pronounced beets per mih-nuht)

Note: Imagine tapping your foot to the music for one minute. That's your beats per minute. 

To help you remember this use the following mnemonic:

She beat her foot on the floor for a few minutes (beats per minute) and we used that beat as our tempo for the music.

Beats per minute is often shortened to BPM. As we know, the beat is the basic unit of time in music, normally conforming to the time it would take to tap your foot to the rhythm of a song. The number of beats that are counted per minute therefore equals the song's BPM.  

Examples of beats per minute in a sentence

I counted the beats per minute of the song.

The number of beats per minute was far too high.

The drummer controlled the beats per minute that the song was played in.