Sky Ferreira says her label locked her out of her SoundCloud account — and she wants it back.
Ever thought about who owns the rights to an artist’s SoundCloud or YouTube channel? As it turns out, some artists aren’t paying enough attention to this critical ‘detail’.
Accordingly, Sky Ferreira now claims that her label has locked her out of her account after requiring her to fork over her information before the debut of her new album. Now, the label apparently refuses to give her account back, effectively holding the account hostage.
Ferreira detailed her claims in an Instagram post, which you can see above.
She says her label bamboozled her by forcing her to give the information to them before her album was released. Shortly thereafter, the password was apparently changed, and she could no longer access the account she created and built a following on before any music label was involved with her work.
Here’s the plea:
“Hey @soundcloud. I can’t access my own account that I started & uploaded everything myself. I ended up bamboozled.I was forced/told I had no choice to hand over my account information to my label after my album came out. They gave me the wrong information & changed it so I can no longer access it. The person who changed the login is unreachable & the contact no longer exist. I need it back ASAP. I earned the hundreds of thousands of people that follow the account without my label & have never had help/paid for anything on social media or whatever. I think of soundcloud as the website that allows musicians to have freedom. Please help xx
“SKY FERREIRA
“PS: I would like to clarify I have always done all of my work directly & by myself. No “team” has ever uploaded (or anything else under any circumstance) my stuff for me whatsoever.”
At this stage, we’re not exactly clear which label (or sub-label) has ‘the keys’ exactly.
Either way, the music streaming giant has yet to respond to the artists’ pleas on Instagram, but this is not the first time Ferreira has struggled with record labels. She’s been a vocal opponent of labels like Polydor and EMI and briefly mentions difficulties on Instagram when discussing her debut album, Night Time, My Time with fans.
Incidents like this raise many questions for artists who were discovered on social media sites before attaching themselves to a larger record label. Ferreira began uploading videos of herself singing on MySpace before being discovered by Bloodshy & Avant and signing a contract with Parlophone in 2009.
She maintains that she built her SoundCloud account and following by herself, with absolutely no help from a team assigned to her by any label.
Ferreira’s newest album is entitled Masochism, and the debut single was supposed to drop in 2015. The artist has yet to release it.
Well, what does the label have to say about this?