A number one hit without a singer: what Sweden’s AI chart row tells us

Jan 16
5 min read

A folk pop song about heartbreak goes to number one in Sweden on Spotify, racks up around five million streams, and the credited artist doesn't exist in any ordinary, human way. It’s a project, a persona, a pitch, a performance, depending on how charitable you’re feeling that day.

Then the official chart says no. Sverigetopplistan will not list it. IFPI Sweden’s position is simple enough: if a track is mainly AI generated, it does not qualify.

And that’s where the argument usually starts. The purists reach for their smelling salts. The technologists roll their eyes. Everyone else shrugs and hits play again.

This feels like one of those moments where two tectonic plates are rubbing together. You can feel the pressure, you can hear the noise, but nothing has quite shifted yet. Old definitions are grinding against new capabilities, and the friction is where the heat is being generated. These are the moments history tends to remember, not because they were tidy, but because they forced a recalibration.

But the most interesting part for me is the bit we can’t talk away: people liked it. They chose it. They replayed it. Over and over. The market spoke, at least the market that lives inside a streaming app.

So here’s the pivotal question that keeps nagging at me. If a song can become number one without a singer, what exactly is a chart for, and who is it meant to serve?

What’s actually being “banned”

Let’s be clear. The song isn’t being censored. Spotify hasn’t pulled it. Nobody’s confiscating headphones at the border. This is a rules decision by an industry chart about eligibility, not morality.

And we do this all the time elsewhere. Indices, ratings, benchmarks, all of them are curated instruments, not holy scripture. The moment you call something “official”, you’ve already admitted you’re measuring a particular version of reality, not reality itself.

AI in music isn’t new; the fog is, though. What’s new isn’t technology entering the studio. The studio has been one long marriage between art and machinery. We’ve had session singers, samples, ghostwriters, pseudonyms, manufactured acts, and songs designed to fit the audience like a well cut suit. Sometimes that’s cynical. Sometimes it’s pop at its best. Either way, it’s not a scandal, it’s the business.

What’s changed is the line of sight. A track can be human led and still use synthetic elements. A track can be AI generated and still involve human taste, editing, and marketing. That ambiguity is not going away, in my humble opinion. It’s going to spread, because it suits everyone who benefits from not being pinned down, or who doesn’t have the time or resources to do it the old way. History is full of these landslides. We seldom go backward when we find convenience. Maybe Concorde. That’s about it.

The part nobody wants to say out loud: streaming is not a neutral pipe. It’s a marketplace shaped by incentives. There are promotional mechanics, algorithmic lifts, and tools that can make a track more present than its merit alone would manage. That doesn’t prove manipulation in any single case. It just reminds us that “number one” is now a mixture of taste and architecture.

Which brings us to the ethical centre of this story: was the audience given the truth, in plain language, about what they were listening to, and how it got in front of them? That’s the only question that matters, in my view. Not whether a model was used. Not whether someone “pressed a button”. Not whether the voice is pixels or vocal cords. Those are craft questions, and craft has always evolved.

For me, this is a trust question. The song was made by producers and AI experts in Denmark, allegedly. And when they were asked if it was real, they allegedly said: “It depends on how you define it.”

Into the grey we dive!

Why this matters to us at Finn Moray

With Finn Moray going from strength to strength, this is obviously an area of direct interest to us. We use AI too, and if I’m honest, it probably gets more airtime than it deserves. Mostly because some people hear the word and shut down their due diligence at that point. But if people look at what we’re actually doing, they’ll find our work is not about replacing people. It’s about finding them, and then promoting them.

The songs on AON: THE CALL are written by a human. The chords are arranged by a human with a Freshman acoustic guitar. The tracks are mixed and mastered by humans using digital tools. AON: THE CALL uses synthesised voices as part of the palette. Then the album acts as a call to go back to the towns the songs came from and find singers from those places, with significant ownership and money flowing to the singers and the regions. And there's no mandatory lock in. If a singer wants to move on after working with Finn Moray, they can. We don’t own their talent. We find talent, give it a stage, and help good causes in the regions the people singing the songs come from while we do it.

That’s a different proposition, I believe, to a viral project built around an invented artist, especially if the invented part is doing heavy lifting in the marketing while the truth sits in the small print.

Different doesn’t mean automatically better. But it does mean more accountable, in my book. More transparency is required.

So what happens next

I’m not convinced blanket bans will age well. If disclosure becomes punitive, people will stop disclosing. You don’t get honesty by turning honesty into a disadvantage.

And let’s be honest: if you were on a quiz and had to name the most transparent and ethical industry in the world, I doubt most reasonable people would have any of the major music industry players at the tip of their tongue. It’s not as if the sector has a spotless track record of ethical behaviour toward listeners or artists.

But pretending none of this matters is, to me, silly. Trust is the oxygen of the creative economy. Once it thins, everything becomes a wee bit performative, including the outrage.

The practical path is boring, which is why it’s correct. We need clear disclosure that travels with the track. We need metadata that’s durable. We need provenance that’s readable. We need platforms, charts, and rights bodies to separate two things that keep getting muddled: how music is made, and how music is pushed.

And we need the courage to ask the question behind all of it: if this is the future, who is accountable when the story is the product, and the product is the story?

For the record, the song is called Jag vet, du är inte min (I know you’re not mine) by Jacub, and I actually really like it. I've listened to it quite a few time. Totally hacked me.

I just wish they would use the cash from the AI version to find a talented unknown from Sweden to sing it live now, and that the owners of the song would give back to good causes. Spotify and Apple, too. I mean, we can like both versions, right? But if they did that, we can also feel good about liking them.

That would be nice. That might just be a good idea.

But if there’s one thing this song has shown, it’s this: if you produce something people genuinely like, they will like it.

And let's be honest: bans make good PR on both sides of the fence. They offer the appearance of clarity when the reality is messy, and they signal virtue without forcing much nuance. That's why they generate headlines. This article's a pretty good example of that!

To buy AON: THE CALL, click the album below and help us find undiscovered talent in Scotland and support good causes.