Dead as Disco Custom Songs: Use TempoFlow to Sync Any Track Perfectly

If you're importing custom songs into Dead as Disco's Infinite Disco mode, you've probably hit at least one of these pain points:

The in-game BPM detection is inaccurate — beats drift or feel off.
Songs with mid-track tempo changes (bridges, breakdowns) are not handled automatically.
Manually tapping BPM is tedious and imprecise, especially for fast or complex tracks.
Beat Offset calibration is confusing — a few milliseconds off and the whole song feels wrong.
There's no easy way to export or share your calibration with other players.

TempoFlow solves all of these. Upload your MP3, get a professional-grade BPM analysis with tempo-change detection, fine-tune visually, then type the values into the game — or replace the metadata file directly.

This guide walks through the complete workflow: from preparing your audio file to having a perfectly synced custom track in Dead as Disco.

The full custom-song workflow

Get your MP3 (or OPUS) ready.
Run it through TempoFlow to get BPM, Beat Offset, and tempo sections.
In Dead as Disco: Infinite Disco → Free Play → Add My Music, pick the file.
Type your TempoFlow BPM and Beat Offset into the game's editor.
Open the Advanced Editor if the song has tempo changes.
Test, save, dance.

Each step has a few details that are easy to miss. Below they are.

Step 1 — Prepare an MP3 file

Dead as Disco accepts a few audio formats but MP3 is the most reliable. OPUS also works. If the game throws "Cannot import the selected file. The file may be encoded in a codec that's not supported," the audio file is technically MP3 but uses a codec profile the game doesn't accept.

The fix is to re-export from a clean tool. Open the file in Audacity and export it again as MP3 (or OPUS). The re-encoded file will import cleanly.

Step 2 — Analyze it on TempoFlow

Open tempoflow.pro and drop your MP3 onto the upload area. After a few seconds you'll see:

A waveform with vertical pink beat lines.
A list of tempo sections — each with its BPM and offset.
Yellow boundary handles where the algorithm thinks tempo changes happen.

For most songs the first detection is already correct. Verify visually that the pink lines sit on the kick-drum hits, then make a note of two values from the first section:

BPM — usually a whole number like 120, 128, 174.
Beat Offset (ms) — somewhere between 0 and 60000/BPM.

If the song has more than one section (you'll see multiple rows in the section list), you'll need them all later for the Advanced Editor. Keep the TempoFlow tab open.

For deeper guidance on what these values mean, see BPM, Beat Offset, and Tempo Changes — What They Actually Mean. For when the algorithm gets it wrong, see Manual BPM Tuning.

Step 3 — Import the MP3 in Dead as Disco

From the main menu, choose Infinite Disco.
Switch to the Free Play tab.
Click Add My Music above the song list.
Browse to your MP3 file and pick it.
The game prompts you to set the BPM. Keep this prompt open.

Step 4 — Fill in BPM and Beat Offset from your TempoFlow result

In the BPM prompt, type the value you got from TempoFlow. Save the song. Test-play it. If the beats line up with the prompts, you're done.

More often you'll need to adjust the Beat Offset. Open the song's settings (or its Advanced Editor entry) and find the Beat Offset field. Type the offset value from TempoFlow. The game expresses Beat Offset in milliseconds, exactly like TempoFlow does, so the value transfers 1:1.

Test-play. If the prompts are still slightly off (rare, but possible — every player has a different audio latency), nudge Beat Offset by ±10 ms until it locks in.

Step 5 — Handle tempo changes in the Advanced Editor

For songs with constant tempo, you're done after step 4. For songs that speed up, slow down, or include a half-time bridge, you'll see multiple rows in TempoFlow's section list. To use them in Dead as Disco:

Open the song's Advanced Editor in the game.
For each TempoFlow section after the first, add a new tempo segment.
For each segment, type the section's start time and its BPM from TempoFlow. The Beat Offset for sections after the first is usually 0 unless TempoFlow shows otherwise.
Save and test-play. The grid should follow the music through the tempo change.

Most songs don't need this — common pop, EDM, and disco tracks are one tempo end to end. But for live recordings, mashups, and some breakbeat tracks, this step is what makes the difference between "kind of works" and "feels great to play."

Where Dead as Disco stores your imports

After you import a song, the game saves a folder for it under your user data directory.

On Windows (PC)

C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Pagoda\Saved\ImportedSongs

Tip: Press Win + R, paste %LocalAppData%\Pagoda\Saved\ImportedSongs, hit Enter.

On Steam Deck (and Linux via Proton)

~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/3404260/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Local/Pagoda/Saved/ImportedSongs

If 3404260 isn't there, open compatdata and pick the most recently modified folder — Steam sometimes uses a different prefix ID per installation.

Inside ImportedSongs you'll find one folder per imported song. Each folder contains the audio file and a metadata file (typically a .json file describing tempo, offset, and any tempo sections). This is the same shape of data TempoFlow exports, which sets up the next section.

Advanced — replacing the metadata file directly

If you'd rather not type values into the Advanced Editor by hand, you can sometimes save time by replacing the metadata file directly. The general flow:

Import the MP3 normally so the game creates the song folder.
Quit the game.
Find the new folder under ImportedSongs.
Click Download JSON in TempoFlow.
Compare the two files. If the field names match, replace the game's metadata file with the TempoFlow-exported one (renaming it to whatever the game expects). Always keep a backup of the original.
Restart the game and play the song to verify.

This depends on the game's current metadata format, which the developers may change between updates. If the game refuses to load the song after replacing the metadata, restore the backup and use the in-game editor instead — it's only marginally slower.

Troubleshooting

"Cannot import the selected file."

The MP3 was encoded with a codec the game doesn't accept. Open it in Audacity and export a fresh MP3. Re-import.

The beats line up but feel sluggish or rushed.

Your audio output device adds latency. Adjust Beat Offset by ±10 ms in the game's settings. Bluetooth headphones in particular can be 50–150 ms behind a wired output.

Beats start aligned and drift toward the end.

The BPM is wrong by a fraction. In TempoFlow, try an integer that's ±0.5 or ±1.0 from what was detected. Common produced-music values are 80, 90, 100, 120, 128, 140, 174.

Beats feel half-speed or double-speed.

Click ×½ or ×2 in TempoFlow on the section, then re-enter the new BPM in Dead as Disco. The half-time / double-time confusion is the most common automatic detection error.

I can't find the ImportedSongs folder.

Make sure you've actually imported a song at least once first; the folder is created on first import. On Windows, the AppData folder is hidden by default — enable "Show hidden files" in File Explorer or use the %LocalAppData% shortcut above.

Wrap-up

The two-tool workflow — analyze on TempoFlow, type values into Dead as Disco — covers basically every track you'd want to play. For constant-tempo songs it's about 30 seconds of work; for songs with tempo changes it's a few minutes of typing into the Advanced Editor. Either way it's faster and more accurate than tapping the BPM by hand.

If you find a song where TempoFlow's detection is wrong, the manual tuning guide covers the four corrections that fix almost every case. And if you hit a song that consistently fails to detect, send it our way via the contact page — failure cases are how the detector improves.

TempoFlow is an independent fan-made tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Brain Jar Games or any publisher of Dead as Disco. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.