Last year I issued to my readers The TJC Challenge, a challenge to listen to all of my music on either Apple Music or YouTube/YouTube Music. At the time, The TJC Challenge took about three hours to complete, appropriate for a morning of shirking responsibilities at the office.
The entire challenge now takes approximately seven hours and eleven minutes. If you just listened to the albums (some of which are, ironically, shorter in playtime than the EPs), it would take five hours and fifty-eight minutes—just shy of six hours.
Actually, it’s a bit longer: when I initially did the above calculations, I forgot to include my latest release, Leftovers IV, which clocks in at nineteen minutes, thirty-nine seconds. That brings the total playtime up to 7.5 hours and change.
Also, you can now attempt the challenge on Spotify as well. I gave up my doomed boycott of releasing to Spotify. I don’t really make any money from streams there, sadly, thanks to their thieving streaming policy, but I realized that the vast majority of music listeners (including my older brother and Dr. Girlfriend) use the service, so I might as well let the people I love have the ability to listen to my music easily.
The point is, it now takes about an entire workday to listen to all of this music. I don’t expect most people to do it, but I will send a free hat to the first person who listens to all of my releases on the streaming platform of their choice. All you have to do is listen to every release, then send me a 100-word blurb about which albums/EPs/songs/pieces you liked—and which you did not—and tell me why. And, no, I’m not going to count every word; you can write more or less. Years of teaching have taught me that people crave a word count or page requirement, so there you go!
Do you have the guts to take on The TJC Challenge? Or the free time, for that matter?
With that, here is 10 April 2024’s “The TJC Challenge“:
Readers, I’m issuing you a challenge: The TJC Challenge.
The TJC Challenge
What is The TJC Challenge, you ask? It’s simple: undertake a marathon stream of every release I have on Apple Music (or your streaming service of choice).
Apple Music Method
If you’re an Apple Music user, it’s pretty easy. Here are three simple steps:
- Click or tap this link to my artist profile (preferably on your phone)
- Hit “play”
- Listen to my tunes!
If you don’t select shuffle, it will play through each of my albums in alphabetic order by title. That means you’ll start with Contest Winner EP and end with Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids.
YouTube Method
Don’t use Apple Music? No problem. The cheapest method (no monthly subscription to a streaming service) is via YouTube. The only downside is that there’s no way to play through all albums without having to select individual releases.
Still, here’s the YouTube method:
- Follow this link to my “Releases” on my YouTube channel
- Hover over one the album you’d like to listen to first and click “Play All”
- Rinse and repeat for each album
The entire challenge will take about 185 minutes—give or take a few seconds and/or minutes—to complete, or around three hours and change.
The beauty is that if you’re doing laundry or household chores, it’ll breeze by, and you’ll enjoy some great tunes in the process! If you need to turn the volume down a bit to focus on another task, that’s fine, too.
One-Hour Variation
If you’d rather take on a shorter challenge, consider listening to Leftovers II, Epistemology, Firefly Dance, and Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids (YouTube links here, here, here, and here, respectively). They come out to almost exactly one hour when played consecutively. These are also my four most recent releases.
Time for Just One Release?
If that or the one-hour challenge are too daunting, and you can only pick one release, I recommend Contest Winner – EP (YouTube link here). The entire EP is only twenty-one (21) minutes long, roughly the length of a television show without commercials. It’s my only release that isn’t instrumental, and it consists of six of the best songs I’ve ever written (well, at least four of them are really good).
Time for One (or Two) Instrumental Releases?
If lyrics are distracting and you want one good instrumental release, I’ll make two recommendations: Epistemology and/or Firefly Dance (YouTube: here and here, respectively). Both are about fifteen minutes long; you could listen to both over a lunch break, or listen to one while driving to work.
Conclusion
If you listen to my entire discography, you’ll travel from my early MIDI compositions in 2006 all the way to last week (1 April 2024). That’s eighteen years of musical growth and development (hopefully not musical regression—gulp!). You’ll also be doing yours portly a huge favor.
If you do the challenge—or even part of it—let me know! What were your favorite releases? Which ones didn’t “do it” for you? What would you like to hear in the future?
Happy Listening!
—TPP
The Portly Politico 