Even more successful are its songwriters. One stands out in particular: Max Martin, who holds the record for the most Billboard Hot 100 number-one songs as producer of 28 hits, and comes second as a songwriter with 30 hits, trailing only Paul McCartney. These include anything from We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together by Taylor Swift and So What by P!nk to I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry.
“For every Swedish crown Sweden sends overseas in music, it gets 2.8 crowns back,” said Will Page, the former Spotify chief economist who wrote a report for STIM, a Swedish non-profit organisation that represents musicians and pays out royalties to them. “That's a higher margin than the automotive, steel, and pharmaceutical industries.”
What explains this success?
Education policies from decades ago are part of the explanation.
In schools, music is hardwired into curricula: every child gets musical education until the 9th grade. On top of this, municipal-run kulturskola (culture schools) offer voluntary after-school musical education and operate in almost all Swedish municipalities.
In 2023, 11% of 6-19 year-olds, or around 190,000 people, were enrolled in kulturskola programmes. Fees for these schools never exceed a few hundred euros per year.
Outside of schools, study circles (studiecirklar) run by independent study associations enable people to come together regularly to learn something. They receive public funding calculated per hour of reported activity.
“This meant that the government indirectly financed a bunch of high schoolers to do whatever they wanted to do,” Page said. “One of those activities was to form a band, and you got funding to pay for instruments and rehearsal spaces. So they formed lots of bands.”
However, the current conservative Swedish government has cut funding to study associations, leading to nearly 300 closed rehearsal rooms and 8,000 lost gigs for Swedish musicians, according to the national study association.
If the government loses in the upcoming parliamentary elections in September, as it's currently projected to do, the opposition has promised to restore this funding.
“With these policies, Sweden built the base of a pyramid, that later narrows down with music-focused high schools, state conservatories, and music colleges, out of which at the end comes Zara Larsson,” Page said.
But there are other countries with strong musical education. So why are our ears full of Swedes?
“There is also a cultural argument,” said Page. “Swedes have this philosophy that a good idea is a good idea shared. That's what Denniz Pop always said.”
Denniz Pop was a Swedish producer who opened Cheiron Studios in a Stockholm district in the 1990s. The hottest acts of the time, like the Backstreet Boys and Celine Dion, went there to record their hits.
Denniz Pop and his almost legendary studio then hired Max Martin, who later trained and passed on knowledge to a new generation of Swedish songwriters.
Swedes also speak great English. The country consistently ranks in the top five countries with the highest English proficiency. But still, it's slightly rough around the edges, which, combined with a leftover Swedish accent, makes it appealing.
“Tove Lo perhaps sings in English in a way that non-English speakers can resonate more with. It's less garbled, clearer words,” Page said.
Creating a trailblazer that can inspire others also comes down to luck. ABBA, who basically invented euro-pop when it won Eurovision in 1974, showed Swedes that pop music can be a career. Sweden is tied with Ireland as the most successful country in Eurovision, with seven wins.
The result of all of these factors was a relatively small network of artists forming in Stockholm. Ola Johansson, a Swedish geography professor at the University of Pittsburgh, mapped where successful Swedish songwriters come from and found a handful of schools.
“Music is a fast-moving industry in terms of the latest styles. You need friend groups who can inspire each other, whose success breeds further success,” he said.