Song banned from Swedish charts for being AI creation

Summary

"Your steps in the night, I hear them go," sings the artist known as Jacub in a haunting voice."We stood in the rain at your gate and ran out and everything went fast. Now I know you are not mine, your promises came to nothing."It quickly became Sweden's biggest song of 2026 so far, amassing more than five million Spotify streams in a matter of weeks, putting it at the top of the platform's Swedish Top 50.However, journalists who began investigating Jacub's identity found that the artist had no significant social media profile, media appearances or tour dates.When investigative journalist Emanuel Karlsten began digging deeper, he found that the song was registered to a group of executives connected to Stellar Music, a music publishing and marketing firm based in Denmark. Two of the individuals work in Stellar's AI department.The producers – calling themselves Team Jacub – issued a lengthy email to Karlsten, insisting their creative process had been misunderstood."We are not an anonymous tech company that just 'pressed a button,'" they wrote."The team behind Jacub consists of experienced music creators, songwriters, and producers who have invested a lot of time, care, emotions, and financial resources."They described AI as a "tool" or an "assisting instrument" within a "human-controlled creative process". To Team Jacub, they said, the five million Spotify streams were proof of the song's "long-term artistic value."As to whether Jacub was a real person, Team Jacub gave a philosophical response."That depends on how you define the term," they said."Jacub is an artistic project developed and carried by a team of human songwriters, producers, and creators. The feelings, stories, and experiences in the music are real, because they come from real people."That response has not impressed the IFPI Sweden music industry organisation, which has blocked the song from appearing in the country's official national charts."Our rule is that if it is a song that is mainly AI-generated,...