Yle has revealed that next year's UMK will be handled out like this year's, aka internal selection for the artist who can handle the big stage, live performance and has high tolerance for stress. This way they are able to invest more on staging and the rest, they say.
They don't know yet however if there will be one artist or several, and how the song(s) will be selected. Yle has contacted record labels, artists, songwriters and producers for ideas. In other words: depends who they manage to get and on what conditions.
The Finnish musicians association approves Yle is clear from the beginning this time and has offered their help, but Yle hasn't yet agreed nor disagreed on that. This year Yle angered them when they changed the rules and threw away the 300 submissions wasting their time and money for nothing when Yle went for Saara Aalto instead all of sudden.
Fans and common people pretty much in unison have named Jenni Vartiainen as the suitable and dream one for 2019....
