A system for supporting a user's repetitive motion activity operates to manage cadence-based playlists identifying one or more media content items having a tempo corresponding to a user's cadence. The cadence-based playlists can be categorized by different tempi or tempo ranges that cover all likely cadences during the user's activities. A media-playback device is provided to acquire a user's cadence and retrieve a cadence- based playlist associated with a tempo or a tempo range corresponding to the cadence.