Ideal tempos

DANCE TYPE	SWEET SPOT	ACCEPTABLE RANGE
Moderate Waltz	144	138-160 beats/minute
Fast Viennese Waltz	168	160-190
Cross-Step Waltz	114-116	108-120
Slow American Ballroom Waltz	100	86-110
Lindy Hop & Triple Swing	75 (150)	58-82 (116-164)
Fast East Coast Swing	92 (184)	80-100 (160-200)
West Coast Swing	110 (55)	106-120 (53-60)
Street Swing (Bugg)	130 (65)	110-150 (55-75)
Hustle	118	110-130
Club Two-Step	82	76-88
Cha Cha	118 (59)	112-126 (56-63)
Salsa	94	86-100
Merengue	120	112-138
Rumba	68	58-75
Social Tango	66	60-80
Tango Argentino	62	Wide Range
Polka	114	104-124
One-Step	118	108-132
Slow Fox-Trot (box step)	64 (128)	60-76 (120-152)
Faster Fox-Trot (magic step)	78 (156)	68-92 (136-184)
Quickstep	100 (200)	90-110 (180-220)

Where is the best tunes

Ask your dancers to bring in their favorite tunes, on CDs or music files.  Don't play them blind, because many aren't danceable (see the above criteria), but collect them for your future programming.

Search through Spotify, iTunes or Amazon mp3s.  If you buy tunes, you can deduct them as business expenses if you're a professional DJ or teacher.

Many complete tunes are now posted on YouTube, often with just a single image of the cover art as the visual.  Then there are several online sites that convert the YouTube videos to mp3s, and a hack using Safari, giving you the entire song for free, but the monaural sound is often too low quality for a dance.

Try the listening stations at record/CD stores, before they completely disappear (oops, too late).

Trade favorite tracks with other dance DJs.

Listen to the radio, including Pandora and internet stations.  Stations often post their playlists.  Internet and satellite stations (like Sirius XM) also give metadata of the current tune.

This website

Good Choice

I believe that coming up with songs appropriate for each dance form is up to the DJ's experience as a dancer.  "This sounds like a cha cha to me."  His/her intuitive hunches are what make every DJ different.  There are no correct answers, and each DJ will have his/her unique sense of whether their tune choice works well for that dance, or not.  Then the dancers each have their unique sense of whether their dance choice works well for that tune, or not.  Everyone is following their hunches, but a part of this process is also objective:

After we come up with an intuitive guess, then we can easily check the tempo, to see if it's within 10% of the sweet spot tempo (below).

We easily tell whether it has a driving high energy or if it's gentle/lyrical, to match to the tempo being above or below the sweet spot.

But coming up with that first intuitive guess is what makes each DJ unique.  My tips don't want to influence that individuality.  The suggestions on this page are just to help increase the percentage of tunes that make the dancers happy.