BPM
Abbreviation with 3 meanings
| Stands for | Beats per minute |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 3 |
| Categories | Arts & Entertainment, Business & Finance, Sports |
BPM has three meanings. The most common are Beats per minute (music) and Business process management (management & strategy); it can also stand for Box Plus/Minus.
Meanings of BPM at a glance
| # | BPM stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beats per minute | Arts & Entertainment › Music |
| 2 | Business process management | Business & Finance › Management & Strategy |
| 3 | Box Plus/Minus | Sports › Basketball |
1. Beats per minute
Arts & Entertainment · Music Abbreviations
Unit of musical tempo counting how many beats occur in one minute. DJs, producers and musicians use it to match songs and set the feel of a track: house music sits around 120 to 130 BPM, hip-hop often 85 to 95 and drum and bass about 170.
Example: The remix speeds the original up from 96 to 128 BPM for the clubs.
Classical scores express the same idea with metronome marks, made practical by Johann Maelzel's metronome patent of 1815. DJ software and many streaming tools now detect BPM automatically for beatmatching and playlists. In medicine and fitness, beats per minute also measures heart rate.
2. Business process management
Business & Finance · Management & Strategy Abbreviations
Discipline of modeling, executing, monitoring and improving an organization's business processes, often supported by software that automates workflows. BPM treats processes as assets to be managed continuously rather than redesigned once.
Example: We mapped the purchase-to-pay workflow in our BPM tool and found that invoice approvals waited an average of six days.
Process models are usually drawn in BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation), a standard maintained by the Object Management Group. In music and fitness, BPM means beats per minute, an entirely unrelated meaning.
3. Box Plus/Minus
Sports · Basketball Abbreviations
Box-score-based estimate of a player's contribution in points per 100 possessions relative to an average player, with 0.0 as average. Basketball-Reference publishes it alongside Offensive and Defensive BPM.
Example: A +8.5 BPM puts him in the same tier as recent MVPs.
Developed by Daniel Myers; the current version, BPM 2.0, appeared in 2020. It estimates plus/minus impact from box-score stats rather than on-court scoring margin. In music BPM means beats per minute, the far more common meaning.
Related abbreviations
More music abbreviations
- AOR – Album-oriented rock
- ASCAP – American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
- BMG – Bertelsmann Music Group
- BMI – Broadcast Music, Inc.
- BTS – Bangtan Sonyeondan
- BWV – Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalogue)
- CHR – Contemporary hit radio
- CMA – Country Music Association
See all 56 music abbreviations →