News - Finland: Audience to choose a 13th wild card for UMK | Eurovision Song Contest News - Azerbaijan 2012 

The Finnish national broadcaster YLE has opened the first audience vote in connection with the Finnish selection for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in Baku. All choices have been so far been made by juries appointed by YLE.

The audience will be able to select one more entry to join the 12 revealed earlier to go further in The contest for new music, UMK.

The jury selections are sure to be discussed at length by the Finnish Eurovision Song Contest fan community. Notably two big fan favourites are missing from both lists, Erase you by DCX and Roudassa by ArtO. These two have constantly been in the top 3 in the fan votes on Finnish websites www.viisukuppila.fi and www.escstats.com.

YLE says that these three were selected on the basis of their online footprint, where the likes on the YLE website and Facebook only played a part, but the artists complete presence on the internet was considered.

The winner of this televote will get fast tracked to the live club gig, that will be recorded in February. The televote is open from Friday 27 January 21:50 until Thursday 2 February 12:00 Finnish time.

The three wild card candidates are

The Spyro – Teleport my heart

The Spyro: Antti Luokkanen, Hape Haavikko, Olli Pitkänen, Simo Ojanen, Toni Korhonen describe their music as indierockdancepunk and have been around since 2008. The band has since given more than 70 gigs, many of them abroad. The band plays energetic and dancable music, and have created themselves an unique and recognisable sound. They are still waiting for the big break-through, even if their first single We're the Libertines did get some airplay in Finland in 2010. The Spyro released their first album Spare parts for perfect people last autumn. Band official website here

Martina – Checkmate

Martina Aitolehti, born in 1982, calls herself the most followed professional in publicity in Finland. Everybody knows Martina. Everybody wants to know Martina. She says that she will be expressing herself in the future through her music, and reveal thing tabloid reporters have not managed to find out about her, not for the want of trying. She has tried her luck in several things, including coaching a dance troupe, training as a make up artist, start a family, star in several TV shows and release an album with Universal Music Finland. She has been helped by true dance pop professionals with her entry. Martina is a very determined woman and will probably remain in the headlines for a while yet. Artist website here

Jessica Wolff – Better

Jessica is a 23-year old stunt woman, biker, actress, kung-fu champion and snake charmer! She has always lived to extremes and is planning to release her debut album this year. She is from Helsinki, and her album is being prepared in Sweden. Website here. Her song better is written by Paul Oxley, an Englishman who made success in Finland with his band Paul Oxley's Unit in the 80s. Co-writer Janne Hyöty has come third in the Finnish national finals before as a songwriter, and the third partner Niklas Rosström has a long career in music and participations in the national finals in Finland and Latvia.

The three songs and voting numbers (only in Finland) are now available to listen on the YLE website here

The list of the 12 qualifiers was leaked on Thursday after the CD release was offered on pre-sale on a Swedish-based online shop. Some fans have since reacted strongly for not seeing their favourites go through and the discussion is certain to go on!

The first UMK show is available to view again on YLE Areena here for a week.

Next Friday the action moves to YLE studio M1, where we follow six of the artists closer when they meet the judges and sig for them live for the first time. The judges will then reduce the number of artists to 8, who will get to perform live on a club gig. The winner of the audience wild card will join these 8 on that live gig.