Melodifestivalen 2013 was the Swedish music competition that selected the 53rd Swedish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2013. Robin Stjernberg's song "You" won the final, and became the first Second Chance song to win the Melodifestivalen final.
The final took place at the Friends Arena on 9 March 2013. For the twelfth consecutive year, the competition consisted of four heats, a "second chance" round, and a final. A total of 32 competing entries were divided into four heats, with eight compositions in each. From each heat, the songs that earned first and second place went directly to the final, while the songs that were placed third and fourth proceeded to the Second Chance heat. The bottom four songs in each heat were eliminated from the competition. This year the selection process for the 32 songs was slightly modified from the previous year by removing the web wildcard round and allowing the selection panel to decide on the finalist in the newcomer block of submissions. In addition, the winning artist of Svensktoppen nästa, a music competition organized by Sveriges Radio P4, automatically qualified to submit an entry for Melodifestivalen. Further changes included modification to the Second Chance round that removed one tier of duels.
Format
Melodifestivalen 2013 was the twelfth consecutive year in which the competition took place in different cities across Sweden. The four heats were held in Karlskrona (2 February), Gothenburg (9 February), Skellefteå (16 February) and Malmö (23 February). The second chance round was held in Karlstad on 2 March while the final in Solna was held on 9 March. The final evening of the competition migrated to the newly built Friends Arena and for the first time since the creation of the current format, it did not take place at the Ericsson Globe.
In the heats, the winners were decided by the telephone and SMS votes of the viewers where the two entries with the most votes went directly to the final, while the third and fourth placed entries competed for another chance to get to the final in the Second Chance round. Of the eight songs that qualified to the Second Chance round, only two progressed to the final to complete the line-up of 10 finalists.
Schedule
Heats
The four heats were held in Karlskrona, Gothenburg, Skellefteå and Malmö. A selection panel consisting of seven men and eight women ages 17–46 selected the finalists out of 2549 total submissions (1902 for the regular contest and 647 for the newcomer selection).
In 2012, Sveriges Radio announced that they would award a wildcard to the artist that wins Svensktoppen nästa, a music competition organized by Sveriges Radio P4, the following year. While all of the artists competing in this competition already had songs, the competition was scheduled to take place on 26 August 2012, which was before the 1 September 2012 cut off date for both Melodifestivalen and the Eurovision Song Contest. Therefore, the winning artist was required to submit a new song that would then be given a wildcard to compete in the competition. Terese Fredenwall ultimately won the competition and on 19 October, SVT announced that she would compete in Melodifestivalen with the song "Breaking the Silence".
For Melodifestivalen 2013, SVT decided to discontinue the Web Wildcard competition that was previously held between 2010 and 2012. Instead, an open selection was still held for unpublished and new artists to submit their entries, however, the selection panel that evaluates submissions for the regular contest would also evaluate these entries and select one which would receive a wildcard. On 17 October 2012, SVT announced that the song "Island" performed by Elin Petersson had been selected and would receive the wildcard.
On 19 November 2012, the first of two press conference was held to present the artists, songs, and composers for the competing entries in the first and second heats. Sandra Bjurman and Stefan Örn, two of the composers who wrote "Running Scared", the winning song of the Eurovision Song Contest 2011, were among the names.
On 26 November 2012, the second press conference was held to complete the line-up and present the remaining entries that would compete in the third and fourth heats. Peter Boström and Thomas G:son, the composers of "Euphoria", the winning song of the Eurovision Song Contest 2012, both had several songs among the 32 entries.
On 3 January 2013, SVT announced the running order for each heat.