STIM, Sweden’s songwriter society, has held a separate AI rights category for every member since 1 June 2026, and its AI licence covers only works a writer has approved one by one.
STIM stands for Svenska Tonsättares Internationella Musikbyrå. Its AI licence is a year old. The default behind it is newer, and it decides whether a song earns from AI training at all.
What changed on 1 June
STIM launched its collective AI licence on 8 September 2025, with Stockholm startup Songfox as the first licensee and Sureel as attribution partner. Writing in Music Business Worldwide, Murray Stassen set the backdrop: a December 2024 study by CISAC, the global confederation of authors’ societies, projected AI could cannibalise 24% of music creators’ revenues by 2028.
At STIM’s 2026 general meeting, members voted in a dedicated AI rights category, administered like live, radio and TV. From 1 June every STIM-affiliated creator sits inside it, in one of three positions:
- Approve nothing. No works enter AI licences, but STIM still monitors the rights.
- Approve selected works. This is done in My Pages on stim.se, work by work. Nothing is included automatically.
- Withdraw the category. You then manage AI rights yourself or through a publisher.
The default now governs a society that collected SEK 3.1 billion in rights revenue in 2025 and paid almost 80,000 members.
How the money is meant to split
STIM pays at two points, and its FAQ sets a different rule for each:
- Training: compensation is distributed proportionally and equally among all works in the licence. Streams do not weight it.
- Output: payment follows attribution, meaning software that links a generated track to the works that influenced it. Licensees must use an attribution provider such as Sureel and, initially, file the analyses monthly.
- Fallback: where attribution is not reliable, STIM distributes by analogy, based on how works were used in the training data.
STIM has not published fees or revenue-share terms. Members will see AI income in My Pages and the STIM app.
The clauses that decide your options
Revocation only runs forward
You can withdraw an approval, but it does not affect use already made under an earlier licence. Training that has happened is not undone.
STIM licenses the song, not the recording
STIM represents the composition only. If an AI company wants a specific recording, the master must be cleared separately with its owner, which for a self-releasing artist is usually you.
Publishers need the category moved
A publisher can run your AI rights only if you withdraw the AI category from STIM and grant it to them.
No sister society can license it
STIM says no other collecting society is mandated to license its repertoire for AI, and that its own AI licences may cover several countries or the whole world.
Finland chose the opposite default
Teosto, Finland’s songwriter society, added an AI category too. Its FAQ, published 16 June 2026, says the category reserves members’ works against text and data mining under section 13b of the Finnish Copyright Act.
Removing the category, with a single selection, takes works out of Teosto’s future AI licensing deals. On Teosto’s wording, leaving takes an action. On STIM’s, joining does, one work at a time.
What to do with your catalogue
- Treat approval as a catalogue decision. Training money splits equally per work in a licence, so ten of your tracks in one draw ten shares, whatever they stream.
- Log every approval with a date. Withdrawal is prospective, so your own dated record is the audit trail you control.
- Settle the publisher question first. Moving the category out of STIM is the only route to publisher-run AI deals.
- Decide the master separately. A yes at STIM covers your composition share only. Ask your distributor in writing whether its terms allow AI licensing of your recordings, whoever you distribute with, InterSpace Distribution included.
- Not in Sweden? Check whether your society has an AI category, and its default. Nordic rules already diverge, from Norway’s distribution pools to Denmark’s unmatched streams.
Sweden’s songwriters already earn much of their money offshore. For AI, the first decision now sits with the writer, song by song.
