Finding Exercise Music: Additional Resources

You can explore many different genres of exercise music through Spotify’s music library.

Since this is our final post in the Music and Exercise series, I would like to tell you about a few more resources that you can use to enhance your workouts through music. Last week we talked about apps, and this week we’ll highlight blogs and magazines that you can use to find new songs for your exercise playlists. When looking over suggested song lists, remember to think about the general characteristics of the music, as well as the BPM, to ensure that you choose music that will help you accomplish your goals.

Here are this week’s featured resources:

Fitness Magazine

Fitness Magazine offers a weekly exercise music series called Music Mondays. On Music Mondays, the magazine usually shares workout playlists that you can access on Spotify. Some of its most recent posts include a playlist by an Olympic hockey player; a playlist with songs by Christina Aguilera; and a playlist with music by Bruno Mars, J-Lo, and Taylor Swift.

FitSugar

The FitSugar blog provides daily information about health and wellness-related issues, and it features posts about music several times a month. Explore its workout music section to find Spotify playlists for workouts of a specified length (e.g., 30 minutes or an hour), playlists for certain types of workouts (mostly cardio but occasionally strength training or yoga), playlists for specific running paces (if you are interested in synchronous exercise music), and playlists with the music of particular artists or genres.

jog.fm

Jog.fm has a user-generated, online database of running, walking, and cycling music. It contains songs and playlists with music from a number of genres, including classical. On the website you can browse songs by genre, BPM, and pace. (As with Fit Sugar, choose music by pace only if you want to use music synchronously during your workout.) You can then preview the songs and choose to either stream the music on Spotify or buy it on Amazon or iTunes.

Run Hundred

Like jog.fm, the Run Hundred website features a user-generated database of workout songs. Users vote on their favorite music, and Run Hundred releases monthly lists of the top 10 song titles and their BPM. On the website you can also search the entire database of songs by genre (country, electronic, hip-hop, pop, rock), decade (back to the 1960s), and tempo (70-89 BPM, 90-109 BPM, 110-129 BPM). Once you find a song, you can listen to an excerpt and vote on whether you would work out to it.

Shape Magazine

Shape Magazine releases a new workout playlist every couple of weeks. Its most recent compilations include a playlist of 60s music; a playlist with non-top 40 tracks; and a playlist with Blink 182, Madonna, and Bon Jovi. Every month, it also shares Run Hundred’s list of songs. When you explore the playlists, you can see each song’s BPM and click the links to preview the songs on Run Hundred.

Other Resources

Those of you with a Pandora account can access workout stations that are generally identified by the musical genre and workout type. For instance, you can listen to the “rap strength training” or “alternative endurance training” stations. Spotify users can also search for workout music and find a multitude of playlists and albums at their fingertips.

As you can see, a number of resources regularly share ideas for workout music, but there are somewhat limited resources when it comes to classical workout music. I hope our previous playlists and posts have helped to fill this void, but feel free to write a comment below or use our contact form to ask us any other questions you may have. We’d love to hear about any additional resources that you find as well.

Thank you for reading our series, and please remember to subscribe to our blog and continue reading as we address other topics related to music and wellness in the coming months!