Michelle Shocked on royalties system: "We work like growers in Columbia"

The US Copyright Office has invited musicians and interested parties to give suggestions to operate changes over the licence for mechanical royalties for compositions - that is to say the royalty paid to the composer, or the publisher, from copies made of the sound recording. Since copies of songs now often are made by third-party services (aside from the record label), the songwriter or publisher receives less information – and is not allowed to demand an audit.

With the help of songwriters and artists alike the US Copyright Office is wiling change the way this system works, granting artists and publishers due royalties that at the moment remain unpaid.

Michelle Shocked is one of the artists who submitted her opinion on the matter and she did it in a straightforward and razor-sharp way.
"I work in a candle factory. I scrape flesh from skins of carcasses and process rendered fat into lumpy bars with wicks. I used to be a poet. I would write, late into the night, by candlelight" she writes, using a tough metaphor. Then she states: "ARTISTS MAKE LOUSY SLAVES!!! NEVER PISS OFF A SONGWRITER!!! PLUTOCRACY DEVOURS ITS OWN CHILDREN!! OCCUPY!!!"
And she ends with a mean, but crystal clear, analysis: "Like growers in Columbia, we see the price of our 'beans' being manipulated and devalued for the commodities market and we understand the consequence of not being able to make a living wage from our work. Beck released his new album as sheet music. I will boycott this system of exploitation and my work will be only available through underground means. I am part of a revolution that will watch your children grow up listening to soft porn, being raped and abused by a porn-and- contraband-drug machine that uses music as a blackmarket portal for its sausage-grinding wares; that will consume your own children and then, heartbroken at their funeral you can reflect back through your guilt and wonder if you caused your own misery and this puny little rant will come back to your remembrance like the prophetic cry of anguish that it is".