American Song Contest (ASC) Executive Producer Christer Björkman has told The Euro Trip that the Eurovision spinoff received over 7000 song submissions. 

Speaking in an exclusive, feature length interview just days after the second ASC show, Björkman revealed that NBC received over 7000 “packages” ahead of the debut edition of the competition. 

Asked how successful he and his team were in receiving songs, Björkman said: “We had over 7000 submissions. 

“You have to know the difference between Sweden. In Sweden it’s songs only. Some of them are connected to an artist but most of them are not. That’s a job that we do after we choose the song. 

“Here it was a package. An artist had to submit an original song so that’s a totally different story. We had 7000 packages, that’s a lot.” 

In Sweden for Melodifestivalen, songwriters are able to submit a demo of a song without an artist. The producers of the show will then reach out to artists who they think will perform well with that song. 

In the USA for ASC Björkman clarified that when a song is submitted to compete it must have an artist attached to it. 

“So the interest was instant I would say.

“But they [NBC] also had a very good starting point because the team that reached out was the same team that The Voice had used for the last 20 seasons so they had a roster of 10000 names to reach out to so they were very successful and it is amazing considering that nobody knew what this is. 

“I think it was a fantastic result.”

Image credit – Ruz.net