Free Sky Ferreira Movement

The Free Sky Ferreira Movement (often stylized online as #FreeSkyFerreira) was a social media campaign organized by fans of American singer Sky Ferreira, designed to mitigate purported disputes between Ferreira and the record label that she was signed to at the time, Capitol Records.^[4] Ferreira released her first studio album Night Time, My Time in 2013, following two EPs, As If! and Ghost, all of which were released by Capitol.

Free Sky Ferreira Movement
Ferreira performing in 2022
Date	March 2021[1] – November 7, 2023[2]
Location	Social media In-person demonstrations: New York, NY, Los Angeles, CA
Goals	Release of the album Masochism
Methods	Social media posts, billboards, aerial advertising
Resulted in	Ferreira dropped from Capitol Records in 2024 Masochism to be released in 2025
Parties
Fans of Sky Ferreira [note 1] Capitol Records

Ferreira has had public issues with Capitol Records dating back to 2018, when she claimed she was forced to give up control of her SoundCloud account.^[5] These disputes continued into 2022, with her claiming that Capitol Records had not supported her enough, often accusing the label of sabotage in the lead-up to the release of her second studio album Masochism.^[6] Taking notice of her claims and the lack of Masochism's release, fans started an online campaign in March of 2021 in support of Ferreira, identifying itself with the hashtag #FreeSkyFerreira.^[7]

History

The title of Ferreira's second studio album was announced on April 6, 2015.^[8] While she had not confirmed a release date then, Ferreira on multiple different occasions had later said that Masochism would be released in the summer of 2016.^[9] After the album had failed to come out, Ferreira later implied a release date in 2018, albeit vaguely.^[10] In 2019, Ferreira released her first single since the release of Night Time, My Time, "Downhill Lullaby", which was intended to appear on Masochism.^[11] In December of 2021, Ferreira stated that Masochism was to be released in 2022.^[12] In March of that year, a second single, "Don't Forget", was released by Capitol Records, but no release date was announced. In regards to the issues with the release of Masochism, fans of Ferreira launched the campaign in March of 2021, primarily centered around an Instagram account titled Free Sky Ferreira, as well as a Change.org petition that advocated for the release of Masochism.^[13]

Free Fiona Movement and Inspiration

In 2005, Fiona Apple faced a similar issue with her label, Epic Records, which supposedly barred Apple from releasing her third album, Extraordinary Machine; this prompted Apple's fans to launch a campaign called Free Fiona.^[14] The Free Fiona campaign was credited with helping aid the eventual release of Extraordinary Machine.^[15] The successes of the Free Fiona campaign have been cited as an inspiration for the creation of the Free Sky Ferreira movement.^[16]

Actions

Times Square Billboard

On August 14, 2023, a billboard appeared in Times Square, New York with the message "Free Sky Ferreira" superimposed onto an image of Ferreira.^[17] The message appeared on the billboard at around 5:30 PM, a was displayed on the 18,000-square-foot billboard for around fifteen seconds.^[13] Those behind the Free Sky Ferreira Instagram account took responsibility for the action one day later, posting videos of the billboard to the account on August 15.^[18] Ferreira herself reposted a video from The Fader to her Instagram story. The video covered the billboard, as well as the Free Sky Ferreira account's claims that Capitol Records was holding her "hostage", Ferreira corroborated the account's claim, adding the caption "It's true" to her story.^[19]

The billboard was said to have cost forty dollars for the fifteen-second time slot.^[20]

Free Sky Ferreira Banner

One month later, on September 22, an airplane carrying a banner that read "Free Sky Ferreira" flew past the Capitol Records Building in Hollywood.^[21][22] It was confirmer that the Free Sky Ferreira movement organized this when later that same day the account claimed responsibility for the banner as well.^[4]

Results

On November 7, 2023, the Free Sky Ferreira account posted that Capitol Records had apparently removed Ferreira from their list of artists, causing many to assume that she had been let go from Capitol.^[23] Ferreira later confirmed that she had been dropped.^[24] Furthermore, Ferreira went on to claim that Capitol Records had informed her that she had been let go on the tenth anniversary of the release of her debut album Night Time, My Time.^[25][26]

In an interview with Vogue, Ferreira revealed that she was unable to release much of the music that she had recorded while she was with Capitol Records, and when asked about the possibility of re-recording much of her unreleased discography, she commented, "Taylor Swift can do that because she’s a billionaire, but I basically put all the money I’ve ever made as an artist back into making music."^[27][28]

In December of 2024, Ferreira released the song "Leash", marking her first release as an independent artist.^[29][30] The song was written for the soundtrack of the 2024 Halina Reijn film Babygirl.^[27] Reijn personally reached out to Ferreira to ask her to compose a track for the film while she was on tour, which Ferreira described as "an ideal way of writing", both the song and the film were released by A24.^[31]

Ferreira announced that Masochism will be released in 2025.^[32]