The song Never heard of him that qualified as one of the 27 songs picked by a jury in Sweden this week has been disqualified from the competition. The song by Figge Boström and Anna Engh was previously available to listen to on Figge Boström's MySpace page. The song that will replace it will be announced shortly.

Never heard of him was selected by the SVT Jury to participate in Melodifestivalen 2010 earlier this week. The song was one of 27 picked for the competition. SVT however was made aware that the song had appeared briefly on songwriter Figge Boström's MySpace page, and therefore had no alternative but to disqualify the entry.

The song becomes the first song to be disqualifed from Melodifestivalen since 2007, when Agnes Carlsson's entry was disqualified after she announced that she would perform in the competition before the official announcement. Her entry was replaced by Cara Mia, which went on to reach third place in the final.

Christer Björkman, the competition producer said "It's very sad to have to disqualify a song, but now I have to find a fitting replacement from within the reserve songs."

The competition rules state (in accordance with the EBU rules for the Eurovision Song Contest that: Only songs never before published or made available to the public either through live performance, pubicity or online are allowed into the competititon. It cannot be made available by television, radio, online or mobile phone.

UPDATE

esctoday.com spoke to Anna Engh about the disqualification. She explained that she woke up yesterday to be told that she had made it to the competition with the song Never heard of him and was thrilled, but something felt wrong. She realised that the song might have been placed on MySpace after it missed out on the competition last year and called her fellow songwriter, Figge. He had put the song online briefly, and they immediately contacted SVT to inform them about the song being published on MySpace.