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FAWM In The Off-Season

FAWM is a February challenge, so the website is in "hibernation" most of the year. That means it is effectively offline, and wiped clean for the next songwriting challenge. That said, there are a few official and unofficial ways to stay connected with FAWM and fawmers all year long...

Official Projects

These are off-season projects organized the FAWM team.

5/9 Song Sprints

New for 2026!

FAWM will host one or more 5/9 Song Sprints or "mini-FAWMs" in summer1 2026!

  • The goal: to write 5 new songs in 9 days
  • The first one: July 4-12, 2026

These will happen at fawm.org just like February Album Writing Month.

The site will open July 1 and your FAWM account, watchlists, etc. will all stay intact. It will stay up for a full week afterward (until July 19) for listening and commenting. Donations will be accepted (recommended $5 for rock hands and $9 for file hosting).

If things go well, we plan to organize a second one in August or September 2026, overlapping with Fawmstock West (see below). This would include hybrid on-line/in-person activities.

Why "Song Sprints"?

To offer fawmers (and would-be fawmers) a some more songwriting fun in the off-season!

Why only 5 songs in 9 days?

We're curious to see if the modest goal and shorter timeframe is more enjoyable, or attracts more participants.

For various reasons, many people can't commit to a whole month of making music (let alone a whole summer), so we thought this would be a neat experiment.

Will there be skirmishes?

Absolutely! Skirmishes, one Weekly Challenge, and all the regular FAWM website features will be there.

Is 9 days enough time to collab?

This is one downside to a "sprint" — some collabs and games may be harder to pull off, depending on your process. That said, fawmers are historically very resourceful, so we expect to see some clever solutions! 😉

Does this mean "50/90" is over?

Dunno yet. As many of you know, from 2008-2024 FAWM “adopted” an existing summer challenge to write 50 songs in 90 days (see below). Sustaining an event like that became overwhelming, so we took a break in 2025.

When discussing what to do for 2026, we found ourselves more excited about the idea of one or more “sprints” rather than one long “marathon.” While we'd never say never, we're unlikely to go back to hosting 50/90 in its original form any time soon. For now, we’re experimenting!

Is this the new norm?

Dunno yet. FAWM is a space to be creative and grow in a community. Those of us who organize it also want to be creative in how to help grow and support that community. We’re looking forward to seeing how this works out.

What happens in the long term will depend on how pleasant and sustainable these experiments turn out to be for us and for everyone else.

Fawmstocks

Fawmstocks are multi-day focused gatherings of fawmers.

In-person collaboration, real-time skirmishes, bonfire cookouts, song circles, and open mics are commonplace. Some Fawmstocks have been organized by FAWM staff (like @burr and @ericdistad), but many were independently organized by enthusiastic fawmers. These generally occur over a long weekend (3-4 days) during the summer at a retreat center.

In 2020 and 2022, FAWM moderator @ductapeguy also organized a "Virtual Fawmstock" of online meetups, fawmer-led workshops, and livestream open mics.

2026 Fawmstock Schedule

Two Fawmstock events are in the works for 2026:

  • Fawmstock West near Portland OR (USA) in August or September 2026 (led by @ericdistad)
  • Virtual Fawmstock on-line in early November 2026 (led by @ductapeguy)

Note: Fawmstocks happen kinda randomly

There is no set or regular schedule for Fawmstocks. The FAWM social media channels and unofficial groups/chats (see below) are good ways to stay up-to-date about fawmstock plans being organized in your area.

FAWM is working to compile a list of resources and best practices if you are interested in hosting Fawmstocks and similar fawmer gatherings. We will make them available on this help site once they are ready.

Social Media

FAWM sometimes posts announcements, songwriting ideas, memes, and other FAWM-related projects throughout the year on social media. The currently active channels are:

There are several other defunct accounts we no longer maintain (, , , etc.). These are considered dormant and simply left "as-is" for posterity.

Tip: You can find a #fawmer anywhere!

You can try posting with the tags #fawm, #fawmer, or #fawmchallenge on any online or social platform. Odds are good that you will be able to find and connect with fellow fawmers just about anywhere!

FAWM-Adjacent Projects

These are spaces not maintained by the FAWM team, but they are run by fawmers, are a "FAWM spin-off" of sorts, or have significant overlap with the FAWM community.

Unofficial Groups And Chats

Several unofficial groups, chats, and sub-communities exist where fawmers stay in touch all year long. The main ones the FAWM team is aware of are:

  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fawmers
    • There are also many regional fawmer Facebook groups
  • Discord servers (several; invites required)
  • Slack workspaces (several; invites required)
  • Zoom meetups (several; invites required)

There may be others. Some are local to a city or scene, others focused on particular genres or interests. You are also weslcome to create your own unofficial fawmer group or chat!

Just be sure to respect FAWM's copyright and trademark in how you name, represent, or advertise any FAWM-adjacent groups to avoid confusion.

Note: These groups are not official!

Groups/chats for fawmers hosted outside of fawm.org are OK, but they are not official.

We do encourage these groups to follow the FAWM's Community Guidelines. However, even though fawmers (and even FAWM moderators) may be active in these sub-communities, FAWM does not sponsor them, is not liable for them, and does not have resources to help resolve any issues that may arise in those spaces.

* For example, there was apparently once a r/FAWM subreddit that has since been banned. FAWM has no idea who created it, or what really happened to trigger the bannination.

Bad Song Club

Bad Song Club is a weekly self-challenge that runs all year long. It was started by longtime fawmer @carleybaer in 2023 as a way to flex over the inner critic in small, low-stakes intervals. New prompts every Monday, and the guidelines are:

  • Set a 30-minute timer
  • Write whatever comes out, even if you don't like it
  • Finish what you start (this is the only rule!)
  • Have fun

There is a weekly email list for each prompt that offers additional inspiration, invitations to occasional virtual "Bad Song Circles" (often attended by fawmers), and other songwriting news.

Prompt archives and email list at: badsongclub.com.

[email protected]

Since 2014, cassette collaborations have been a staple of the FAWM experience for many.

In 2025, @fairplay and a few other fawmers started a group to trade 4-track and 8-track cassettes all over the world in the months between FAWMs.

You can find more at: groups.io/g/cassette.

Song Fight!

Song Fight! is a weekly online songwriting contest that began in 2000. Each week someone provides a title, anyone can write a new song for that title, and email an MP3 by the deadline. The following week the songs are posted, listeners vote, and a "winner" is crowned.

While unaffiliated with FAWM, there is significant overlap between the two communities. In fact, the notion of a Skirmish (née "Song Skirmish") actually began in FAWM 2010 as a mini-challenge instigated by fawmer-songfighters (see History). Skirmishes were once weekly events during FAWM before evolving into several per day throughout February...

Anyway, many fawmers keep up with each other year-round at: songfight.org.

Summer Album Writing Challenge (SAWC)

In the DIY community spirit of FAWM, @robinleaf spearheaded a 2025 challenge to help fill the void left by the year's 50/90 sabbatical (see below).

The Summer Album Writing Challenge (SAWC) had a goal of 14 songs in the month of June. She decided to leave the site open longer in case others wanted to continue sharing new music throughout the summer.

You can find more at: albumwritingchallenge.org.

Dormant Projects

These are FAWM-related activities you may see references to, but aren't active.

The 50/90 Challenge

The 50/90 Challenge (known as the "50 Song Challenge" or "50 Songs in 90 Days" prior to FAWM's involvement) is a summer songwriting marathon.

The goal is to write 50 new songs in the 90 days from July 4 through October 1.

This began independently of FAWM, and actually predates it. It apparently started in 2000 as a personal project of David Robinson, who explained in 2001:

"The original idea for the 50 Song Challenge came from Pat Pattison, who mentioned he had once written 50 songs with Josh Leo over the course of a summer. They were writing for a publisher, so the level of songs they came up with had to be obviously pretty high. I thought it was a neat little challenge, and decided to see if I could do it."

The challenge attracted participants to Usenet and Yahoo groups, who later discovered FAWM in 2007, and recruited fawmers to try the 50 song challenge that summer. Then they asked if the FAWM platform could be adapted for a 90-day summer challenge in 2008.

Thus FAWM adopted the challenge, started calling it "50/90," and hosted from 2008-2024. It was variously organized by @ericdistad and/or @burr, with help from @beto and the regular FAWM moderators as well. But the demands of a running 3+ month event became overwhelming.

In 2025, the FAWM team took a break from hosting 50/90 for many reasons.

In 2026, we decided to try 5/9 Song Sprints (see above) instead.

What made 50/90 so much work?

The 50/90 Challenge is more than 3 times longer than FAWM, but would attract fewer than 1/4 of the participants. Throughout the 2010s, this actually made it pretty low-key and enjoyable.

Since the pandemic, however, the FAWM team has had to deal with (and stay vigilant about) ever-increasing numbers of abuse reports, copyright disputes, spam accounts, and forum arguments. This additional labor is invisible to most fawmers. July would often be OK, but things would compound the longer the site was up, so August onward became extremely draining. Our decision to take a break is not about money or donations. 50/90 simply became too much work and too little fun for a volunteer-run project, so we wanted our summers back. 😅

While we'd never say never, we're unlikely to go back to hosting 50/90 in its original form any time soon, and are currently experimenting with other "off-season" challenge formats instead. We know this is a disappointment for many. And after 17 years, we feel a strong sense of loss ourselves. Thanks for understanding.

Rocktober (Cover Songs)

Rocktober is a challenge to record cover songs (or cover an entire album) during the month of October. It was proposed by fawmer @jackdawfactories as a way to keep the momentum going after the first FAWM-powered 50/90 back in 2008.

While not an "official" FAWM event, Rocktober has been organized by various fawmers off and on for years in various forms, but is currently dormant as far as we know.

  1. Summer in the Northern hemisphere. Note that FAWM is already in the summer for antipodean fawmers! ↩