Let’s hear it for the dancing feet. Songs to dance by.

Let’s hear it for the dancing feet. Songs to dance by. Developed by students at the MIT Media Lab and owned by Spotify, Echonest uses digital processing technology to identify attributes of songs, such as valence, instrumentation, and key signature (pdf). The company created a proprietary algorithm to determine the “danceability” of a song based on its tempo and beat regularity. The calculation emphasizes the ability to dance throughout the whole song, so a bridge that even briefly changes the mood is highly penalized.

But we don’t use computers to come up with songs to dance by. So give us the tunes that make you move your feet.