looking for a track with just a single piano key/chord on the drop, its techno track i think
At 1:55pm on April 2, 2016, Mike Davis posted this vague description of a tune on a Facebook group known as the Identification of Music Group. "It was from a J.E.S.U.S. set at uni, I think Jackmaster dropped it,” he tells me several years later. “The track came into my head after a while so I gave the group a go."
Three minutes later, at 1:58pm, group member Tom Butterworth shot back:
DJ w!ld - when u feel me
Butterworth says that other members of the group thought the match was fabricated, and that he could never have got the right track based on such a flimsy description. "It was quite funny, because some in that group thought I set that ID up with my mates to make myself feel good,” he says. “Really, it was just a good guess."
Incredibly, though, this kind of “good guess” isn't that rare for the group. Founded in 2015 by Daniel Rothwell, the Identification of Music Group (also known as IoM) was set up to uncover unknown tunes slightly more catchy than the group's name. It’s best to think of it as a human version of Shazam. Once you’re part of the group (which is open to anyone, as long as you aren’t trolling) you can post a description, video or remake of a track that’s been bugging you. Then, hopefully, a keen listener from the “hive ear” of the group will comment with the name of the tune.
Over the past few years, the group has grown rapidly. "It started only a few years ago as a means to identify music through shaky videos with poor audio or video quality amongst friends from their night out," says Robbie Murch, who works on the project full time as its current director. “Since, it has turned into a goliath in its own right as a fully-functioning online music discovery community.”
The group is currently just shy of 100,000 members, many of whom are active in trying to identify tracks, rather than dormant lurkers. On May 20, Murch is also launching a website for the group, which promises “exclusive words on free events, merchandise and IoM’s top picks of the month.” The Facebook group will still exist for IDs, but Murch hopes the website can bring a new outlet for members. “Facebook is confining as we have so much bedroom DJ talent and great up-and-coming promoters we want to support, so we need to expand to .com to accommodate for this,” he says.
Murch believes that the reason the IoM group has blown up so much is because it offers a new take on music identification – one that is peer-to-peer. Indeed, this is what makes it so intriguing: unlike Shazam or SoundHound, it’s a human ear rather than a digital one. Sure, these apps work great if you hear an ear-worming chart tune in Tesco – but for mysteriously blank white label records, unreleased edits and tinny live recordings, they’re likely to fail. Plus, of course, the “hive ear” can deal with more than just recordings. Written descriptions, hooks recreated on pianos and hummed-along tunes are all game, and worth a go if you want to finally put a name to a track that’s been whirling around your consciousness.
In this sense, IoM Group is two fingers to total automation. It functions as a kind of retro-futuristic form of technology, which rejects the digital (the perfect hearing of apps) but also embraces it (an online consciousness). An app could have never found Davis’s tune – but because of a knowledge of recent setlists, trends and an ability to understand a hastily written description, it only took Butterworth three minutes.
Members, however, are more interested in techno than technology, and they also use the group as a kind of online club to chat everything dance music. Most are just musos and clubgoers, but there are also a fair share of DJs. Some of the keenest identifiers have even become well-known in the community. Paul Davis recently won an “identifier of the month” award for his sharp ear, and claimed a pair of ear plugs for identifying the most number of songs in a month.
It’s this passion that makes equivalent apps appear cold. Comment threads on IoM are as sprawling as a pair of vintage festival pants, littered with “b” responses to “bump” (Bring Up My Post) discussions back to the top of the feed. People will go to great lengths to identify a tune. Last summer, a user called Harry was desperate to bag an ID for a track dropped by electronic artist Elliot Adamson. “I messaged Elliot but he wouldn’t give up the title – so I posted on the IoM Group instead,” he recalls. Adamson, however, was also a group member. He replied that he’d only help Harry out if he “post(ed) a video of you singing into an iron, while ironing your freshest socks and in your boxer shorts.” Harry did.
Read more: Infoporn: the most Shazamed songs – tracked by the second
It’s also not uncommon to see people offer a monetary bounty for tune-hunters, though these are often donated to charity. Rather entrepreneurially, Murch leases the cover image space on the Facebook group to music promoters (usually members themselves), like a virtual billboard. “For over two years, the UK’s best underground parties came to us to advertise their events,” he says. “Instead of charging, we asked them to choose a charity and donate £50 per week to it.”
As laissez-faire as the group may appear on the surface, however, it is strictly monitored behind the scenes. Murch tells me that moderators decline thousands of members who “flout our rules and disrespect our page”. These rules include an instant ban for anyone who comments “Darude - Sandstorm” or “Unreleased Bicep” (a pisstake comment riffing on the number of videos posted with tunes by Belfast duo Bicep). Intriguingly, the page even has a PR – Morley Dave of Lollop – who got involved to grow the page to new heights and help create partnerships with music brands. “Robbie understood that using the experience of industry professionals would help to sculpt the brand offering in the most robust and respectful way moving forward,” he explains.
Murch has ambitious plans for the group moving forward, and takes his work seriously. He recently started a “Record Responsibly” campaign – as many members use video recordings of DJs to find the names of tracks, the campaign encourages them to turn their phone brightness down, not use flash and film discreetly so as not destroy the vibe of a night out. “The focal point of the Record Responsibly campaign is on not allowing the success of the group to detract from the live music experience,” says Murch. “We aim to raise awareness around track IDing respectfully.”
But as the group continues to evolve and expand beyond its social media routes, there will always be identifiers on hand to decipher a white label, and posters willing to work their socks off to chase an elusive ID of an unknown tracks. Literally, in some cases.
Updated September 12, 2018 15:15BST: This article originally stated that the IoM Group was founded by Robbie Murch. It was in fact founded by Daniel Rothwell; Murch is its current director.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
