How was it selected?

Yleisradio (Yle) repeated last year’s selection process of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (UMK) with a few alternations from 2012. Yle picked 12 entries to compete in two heats, each containing six songs. From this, two songs were selected to qualify to the Final and three went through to the Semifinal. The other song was eliminated. There were 6 songs, therefore, in the Semifinal, four of which qualified through to the Final. This meant that there were 8 entries in the Final of UMK 2013. The voting process used throughout was 50% televote and 50% jury vote.

In the Final, three songs led after the jury vote was counted – Krista Siegfrids, Mikael Saari and Great White North all received 14.6% of their vote. However, the public were overwhelmingly in favour of Krista Siegfrids, as she walked away the champion of UMK 2013 with 38.6% of the televote.

Pernilla Karlsson was the lucky lady which the Finnish public chose to represent them in Baku but she didn’t qualify from their semifinal, finishing in 12th place in Semifinal 1 with 41 points, just 12 points away from a qualification spot.

• January 2013, Text Interview