A song that has garnered millions of streams in Sweden has been removed from the country’s official music charts due to its creation by artificial intelligence (AI).
“I Know, You’re Not Mine” (Jag vet, du är inte min), currently a top track on Spotify’s most popular Swedish songs playlist, features a digitally created vocalist. This has prompted the Swedish music industry body to exclude it from official chart rankings.
The track is a folk-pop composition that narrates a poignant tale of lost love.
Accompanied by a finger-picked acoustic guitar, the song recounts a story of late-night heartbreak, broken promises, and dashed hopes.
“Your steps in the night, I hear them go,” sings the artist, known as Jacub, with a haunting vocal delivery.
“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.”
The song rapidly ascended to become one of Sweden’s biggest hits of 2026, amassing over five million Spotify streams within weeks and claiming the top spot on the platform’s Swedish Top 50 chart.
However, journalists investigating Jacub’s identity discovered the artist lacked a significant social media presence, media appearances, or tour dates.
Investigative reporter Emanuel Karlsten’s deeper inquiry revealed the song’s registration to executives linked to Stellar Music, a Danish music publishing and marketing firm. Two of these individuals work within Stellar’s AI department.
The producers, identifying themselves as Team Jacub, responded to Karlsten’s inquiries with a detailed email asserting that their creative process had been misinterpreted.
“We are not an anonymous tech company that just ‘pressed a button,'” they stated.
“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 “assisting instrument” within a “human-controlled creative process,” emphasizing the five million Spotify streams as evidence of the song’s “long-term artistic value.”
When questioned about Jacub’s existence as a real person, Team Jacub offered a philosophical response.
“That depends on how you define the term,” they remarked.
“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.”
This response has not satisfied IFPI Sweden, the country’s music industry organization, which has barred the song from inclusion in official national charts.
“Our rule is that if it is a song that is mainly AI-generated, it does not have the right to be on the top list,” stated Ludvig Werner, head of IFPI Sweden.
Sweden is positioning itself as a global testbed for the AI economy, amid concerns that AI could reduce revenue for the country’s music creators by up to 25% within the next two years.
Last September, the Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM) introduced a licensing system allowing tech firms to legally train AI models on copyrighted works in exchange for royalty payments.
At the launch, Lina Heyman from STIM hailed the framework as “the world’s first collective AI license,” designed to “show that it is possible to embrace disruption without undermining human creativity.”
The Swedish chart ban on “Jag vet, du är inte min” reflects a stricter stance than that of international organizations such as Billboard, considered a leading authority on global music rankings.
AI-generated tracks have appeared on some Billboard charts, which, according to the organization, reflect listener preferences. Tracks meeting sales, streaming, and airplay criteria qualify regardless of their algorithmic origins.
Bandcamp, a platform known for supporting independent artists, has adopted a more stringent policy.
They prohibit music “generated wholly or in substantial part by AI,” including tracks composed or produced by AI or using voice clones.
The AI-generated music market is projected to expand into a multi-billion-pound industry in the coming years. As this new era of digital music creation unfolds, the controversy surrounding Jacub in Sweden underscores that, for the time being, human musicians, not machines, continue to dictate the musical landscape.
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