Sky Ferreira has responded to a billboard in New York City that claims she is being “held hostage” by her record label.

Ferreira’s fans had reportedly bought a billboard in Times Square to share a photo of the singer with the message “Free Sky Ferreira”, claiming that her music is being held hostage by her label Capitol Records.

The singer responded to the billboard and messages by posting a photo of it to her Instagram stories with the caption “It’s True”, confirming that her label is keeping her from releasing new music, especially her follow-up to her 2013 debut ‘Night Time, My Time’.

Sky Ferreira literally confirmed she’s held hostage by her label pic.twitter.com/UAjPZzMWee

— #freeskyferreira (@ssskyferreira) August 17, 2023

The billboard appears to have been organised by an Instagram fan account for the singer who has been campaigning for Ferreira’s release from her record label since March 2021. “Sky Ferreira has been held hostage by her label Capitol Records for almost a decade. They’ve been blocking the release of her sophomore album ‘Masochism’ since 2015,” reads a pinned post on the Instagram account.

Earlier this year, Ferreira addressed the struggles she’s facing with putting out new music and her reputation as a “difficult” artist.

She took to Instagram on January 14 to share a snippet of new music alongside the caption: “I want to put this out”. Posting on her story, she shared a clip of her performing the unreleased track during a soundcheck back in 2019. “Look at the date,” she wrote in the accompanying caption. “I tried to put out this song forever ago. This is not my fault and it’s not a conspiracy or whatever.”

She continued: “I am not a hysterical/lying/lazy lunatic. I can pull up performances from 2014 of unreleased singles too. This is beyond fucked up. I am so frustrated & over it.

“Being ‘difficult’ or ‘high strung’ doesn’t give people the right to damage & stall my career,” she wrote. “I am in a difficult situation & I have to be ‘difficult’ to get through it. I have to protect my work & myself somehow?

“A lot of it is not being allowed to say or do anything I want/need without it being dismissed. I can’t think of a time in the last 7 years where I’ve been able to just focus on what I’m supposed to do, despite having to basically sacrifice every aspect of my life to make sure it happens.

“It’s not okay. If I’m not allowed to say something without consequence & the people who are supposed to do their job refuse to look out for me… How am I not going to be ‘difficult’?!?”

In an interview with NME last year, the singer revealed that her highly anticipated second album was nearly done. “It’s basically done for the most part, it’s just that some parts need to be re-recorded, Just the finishing touches, really,” she said.

‘Masochism’ was first scheduled for release in 2015, and has been pushed back multiple times since. In October 2021, she said a release date for the album had been confirmed, teasing its arrival for March 2022.

The following month, she asserted that ‘Masochism’ was “actually coming out” in 2022, and back in January 2022, Ferreira’s mother re-confirmed that a March release was on the cards.

When the album wasn’t released in March, Ferreira told fans to hold off on their “wrath and death threats” until the following month.

The singer also opened up about her experiences with sexism in the music industry and how she’s resisted attempts to pigeonhole or control her image throughout her career.

“In the music industry, everyone’s trying to mold you. They have an idea of what you should be,” she said in a conversation with Nancy Sinatra for Interview. “People get greedy. When I was younger, I got cornered in situations where it was like, ‘You have to do this,’ and I didn’t know better. It was just different back then.”

She continued: “The internet was there, but it wasn’t this thing that people had figured out. I used it to my advantage – that really helped me get my stuff out. But I’ve been shelved so many times. You know, I first came out when I was 15 and it wasn’t a fair representation of me. And then, I wasn’t even that much older, but I started meeting people to collaborate with, and it started falling into place.

Ferreira’s highly anticipated LP, ‘Masochism’, is still yet to receive a formal release date. Her latest release was 2022’s ‘Don’t Forget’.