On an unusually warm April morning in Gothenburg, Sweden, Mikael Daghighi — known online as mikeeysmind — is hunched over a half-eaten croissant in a quiet café, staring at his phone like it belongs to someone else.
iShowSpeed, one of the world’s most popular streamers, had just used his latest track for the background of a birthday Instagram post.
“It’s a little insane how fast it all happened,” the 25-year-old says, referring specifically to the 1 billion global Spotify streams now attached to his name. “Sometimes I feel like I’m watching it from outside.”
Daghighi has over 71 tracks with at least 1 million streams on Spotify alone. This does not include widespread usage across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where millions of short videos incorporate his music. Making himself the kingmaker of sped-up music, by always being first, has led to deals with both Warner and Universal Music, and, while he declines to comment on revenue numbers, likely at least $5 million in 2025 revenue.
Born the 16th of October 2000 in Sweden, Daghighi wasn’t exactly planning a music career from a young age. In his free time, he had been uploading short, emotionally raw tracks under the alias mikeeysmind, blending elements of rap, electronic, alternative pop, and something distinctly his own. They were made in isolation, mostly in his bedroom, and released without much fanfare.
Then came TikTok.
In early 2023, fan-made edits began surfacing: emotionally charged video clips — montages of heartbreak, stylized anime cuts, grainy footage of rain-streaked windows — all set to fragments of his songs. Some edits racked up millions of views overnight. One track led to another, and then another. By mid-2023, mikeeysmind’s songs had soundtracked thousands of user-generated TikTok videos and spread across continents without ever being played on the radio.
What followed for Daghighi was less overnight success than exponential creep. His catalog surged past 100 million streams in 2023, bolstered by a fiercely young and online fanbase with multiple placements on Spotify’s editorial playlists. His presence on TikTok became a kind of shorthand: not quite a household name, but more an aesthetic.
Late that year, Daghighi founded Unjaps AB, his independent label aimed at nurturing similarly genre-blurring, algorithm-focused artists. Within months, the label signed a global distribution partnership with Warner Music Group’s Alternative Distribution Alliance — an unusually major alliance for an artist still operating without traditional management.
The stats have become harder to ignore. In 2024, Daghighi charted on Billboard — specifically, its TikTok charts.
His Spotify monthly listeners today stand above 15 million. On YouTube, the number is an eye-watering 650 million. And in Sweden — where pop exports tend to be polished and major-label-born — he is an anomaly: one of the most-streamed Swedish artists globally, according to Spotify, while still largely outside the mainstream music industry at home.
“I think people expected me to pivot into being more of a ‘proper artist,’” Daghighi says. “But I’m still figuring out what that even means.”
Now, Daghighi continues to build his world without a major-label album, publicist, or tour machine. His recent remix of Stromae’s “Papaoutai” hit #2 on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales, and was dubbed the most viral song of 2026 by Newsweek. His Unjaps label has expanded beyond Sweden, quietly signing artists across Europe, Asia and the US. There are tentative moves toward live shows, but nothing announced. “It has to feel right,” he says. “I’m not in a rush.”
On the side, Daghighi is an investor. “The world is moving faster and faster,” he adds. “That applies to my music, but that also applies to the markets I’m interested in,” referring to highly-volatile cryptocurrency assets he’s a fan of.
As he pockets his iPhone and prepares to leave, Daghighi pauses. “It’s funny,” he says. “A year ago my songs were just audio clips under someone else’s video. Now they’re… mine again.”
He says it like he’s still not sure whether that’s a good thing.