'BodiBeat' matches music to your heart rate

(Credit: Yamaha)

The link between digital entertainment and exercise seems to be fairly well documented on the Wii alone, so it stands to reason that the combination would be fertile ground for other companies. And when's the last time you saw anyone on a cardio machine at the gym without an MP3 player?

Yamaha has clearly figured that out with its new "BodiBeat," a wearable gadget scheduled for August that it says is "the world's first music player/heart rate monitor that selects and plays songs to match the pace of the user's workout." It figures out which songs to play based on a "bpm" scale (beats per minute), which in turn determines the "runnability" of each tune to select one that's appropriate for the exercise.

That feature will be appreciated by anyone who's had "Feelings" come on while hitting peak strides on the treadmill. Though that's probably the least of their problems, if that's on the playlist to begin with.

[cfaslave]

Nice Idea, but why not build BPM workout playlist?

Or instead of spending money on a "special" device to match your music to your heart rate, you could just build smart playlists for your basic levels of workouts like is outlined in this blog post:
http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/06/make-itunes-workout-or-mood-playlist.html

[joggernut]

Need music for your new BODiBEAT

LIke Brent says in his comment above, you can make your own lists. He's got a
great blog post about this. He also mentions <a
href="http://jogtunes.com>JogTunes.com They offer listings and and
playlists of BPM rated tunes (over 650) with links to iTunes and other sources.
They find the songs and determine the BPMs so you don't have to. Quite a time-
saver. Either way you do it, it should greatly enhance your BODiBEAT experience.

[bbakerxyz]

www.bodibeat.com is actually going to have a pretty sweet song database where you'll be able to search a library of ~100K songs by beats per minute, "runnability," etc. Then you'll be bale to buy the songs directly via the Amazon mp3 store. Jogtunes is a pretty good site, but BODiBEAT's library will be an order of magnitude larger and Amazon mp3's are DRM free so you can play them anywhere!

[kolywater]

i wrote synchstep (http://synchstep.com) and it does exactly this. it's free and runs on your iphone or ipod touch and works with your entire music library.

it's a project i made back in 2005 that i ported to the iphone/ipod
last february.

http://synchstep.com