If you only had 28 days to make an album, EP, or single, what would you do?
This is a question that participants of the global RPM Challenge must ask themselves as February swiftly approaches, marking the beginning of this year’s annual challenge.
RPM began in 2006, making 2026 the twenty-first year of the creativity-fostering challenge. Notice that verbiage, ‘challenge,’ rather than ‘contest,’ as the challenge aims to encourage making music without the pressure of competition.
A brief history of RPM in NL
Elling Lien, St. John’s resident and director of arts organization UnPossible NL, has been running the RPM Challenge locally since 2008.
Working as editor of The Scope, a small alternative newspaper distributed in the 2000s-2010s, Lien brought the challenge to Newfoundlanders with a hope that it would inspire community building.
Like any good newspaper editor, Lien and his colleagues took an interest in what other publications were doing, partially out of support for them and partially for sparking inspiration.
The team at The Scope happened upon New Hampshire paper The Wire, who were kicking off a particularly intriguing project.
“[The Wire] were just starting this thing called the RPM Challenge,” Lien said. “We were like, ‘I wonder if this would work here.’ Lo and behold, it seems to have pretty well.”
After 20 years, the challenge still appears to be popular among Newfoundlanders. Lien cites winter weather blues and creativity fueled by friendship and collaboration as factors contributing to the high participation rate.
“Especially up in this hemisphere, and here locally, because the weather is [bad] in February… some people are looking for something to do, maybe that loops in friends and things like that, or is just a fun thing to do,” he said.
Experimentation without pressure & prerequisites
Lien, along with other RPM organizers, strives to make one thing clear through their challenge: music is something everybody can do.
The common ‘I’m not musical’ argument is easily disputed here – the challenge has little criteria, emphasizing creative freedom, experimentation, setting goals and self-motivation over musical quality, which is subjective anyway.
“It pulls people out of the woodwork who are just curious about music,” Lien explained. A lot of people have previous experience or interest in making music to some degree, but don’t consider themselves capable. He says that RPM is a good excuse to try.
“Why not make noise? Make a noise album. Yeah. Just get a couple people over, start a tape recorder or start your phone. Do some field recordings outside, walk around. There’s really no limit to what you can do with that.”
RPM can also alleviate established musicians’ self-imposed pressure, encouraging them to briefly shrug off the expectations of being an artist, experiment with other genres, cultivate their skills, and focus on making something rather than making something perfect.
Variety & surprises
Averaging 100 submissions from Newfoundlanders and Labradorians each year, the RPM Challenge is a prominent site for innovation and creativity.
Submissions strike listeners with inventive production techniques, raw talent, and vulnerability. Some submissions from last year’s challenge included a jazz fusion album with recordings of bird species from Brazil, and an album where 10 different bands were given the same drum track to fill out as they saw fit.
The challenge spans countless genres and varying between polished versus messy.
There is truly no limit to what you can submit for RPM – one year, a sound recording from when NASA landed on Mars was entered as a submission.
“I’m always blown away,” Lien said when asked what surprises him each year.
“[There’s] this kind of magic thing that happens where people are just messing around doing things for fun and don’t really think about making it super high quality, but then they create something and share it. And then you listen to it, like, ‘Oh my god, this is great.’”
“You’ll have a moment that you appreciate in your record if you just throw it together. And that always surprises me,” the organizer said.
While the challenge officially kicks off on February 1, there’s no ‘deadline’ for signing up; it remains open the whole month to accommodate last-minute entries, or folks stuck by inspiration mid-February. A comprehensive archive is available online as well.
So far, the 2026 iteration of the challenge has nearly 400 participants, 56 of whom hail from NL, meaning that local artists this year account for an impressive one-eighth of participants globally.
“It’s for fun. Make some noise, write some songs. I’m really excited to see the submissions from this year. You could do it. Whoever’s reading this, you could do it.”
