Belltown nightclub under fire for alleged copyright infringement

Ora nightclub, located in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, could soon be facing legal action.

According to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Ora is accused of repeatedly refusing to stop playing copyrighted songs that fall under the protection of the group.

ASCAP is a performing rights organization that represents the rights of more than 1 million members who are songwriters, composers, lyricists and music publishers.

“We represent more than 20 million works that we have the authority to license, and basically across every conceivable genre of music,” Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at ASCAP Jackson Wagener told MyNorthwest on Friday. “So on behalf of those members, ASCAP licenses the right to publicly perform their music, and we license that right to all sorts of different businesses that want to use music as part of their offering.”

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Wagener explained that if a business is using music from ASCAP, it is required under copyright law to get permission from the songwriters and copyright owners.

“One thing we take seriously is to go out and license our music, collect royalties on their behalf, and then distribute those fees that we collect from licensees back to our members as royalties,” he said.

Wagener said ASCAP is the only performing rights organization in the U.S. that operates on a not-for-profit basis, so 90 cents of every dollar it collects goes back into the hands of the creator.

“We think it’s very important and that’s because songwriters earn their livelihoods by licensing the performance, performing rights that are granted to them under the copyright law,” he added. “So it’s really their blood, sweat and tears that go into writing the music. It’s how they put food on the table, it’s how they pay rent, it’s how they put their kids through school. And so we take very seriously our obligation to go out and license our members’s music and collect royalties on their behalf.”

Wagener said that clubs will advertise the type of music playing and that’s most likely what tipped off the ASCAP team about Ora. The next step, explained Wagener, is ASCAP’s licensing team started a series of communications with Ora.

At each establishment, the team gives a rundown of what ASCAP is and explains “there’s a legal obligation under the Copyright Act to obtain permission from music creators before you use their music. And then the flip side of that is, we also explain to these establishment owners that the royalties received by ASCAP are incredibly valuable to our members, that its really how they earn their livelihood,” Wagener said.

The team then offers the owner of the establishment an ASCAP license. However, Wagener said the ASCAP waits up to a year before evening considering litigation.

“We view litigation as a last resort,” he said. “We don’t want to be out suing nightclubs and other other venues. Our preference is always to try and resolve these matters through licensing, but at some point, right when owners repeatedly refuse or tell us, you know, we’re not taking the license for one reason or another, we’re really left with no other choice.”

Wagener said he can guarantee Ora either repeatedly refused or ignored ASCAP.

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Wagener explained ASCAP hired a private investigator to go into Ora and take notes of the songs performed during a random night. During that night, the ASCAP complaint alleges the DJ at Ora performed “Pony,” “Hot Boy” and “Trap Queen.”

“The songs that get picked for any given lawsuit kind of just happened,” he said. “It just happens to be whichever music that is owned by ASCAP members that was played.”

Per the copyright act, Ora could be fined anywhere between $750 to $30,000 per work. Wagener said judges have a lot of discretion and ultimately set the amount but with ” a range of up to $30,000 per work, that’s enough to get someone’s attention and get them to come to the table, or even one file a lawsuit.”

“Our goal is not to put anybody out of business,” he added. “We want establishment owners and bar owners to use our music, our members’s music, and we want them to succeed when they do so. We want to make sure that our members are being fairly paid because without that fair compensation, they can’t make a living and they can’t keep making the music that’s drawing the people into the nightclubs in the first place.”

Wagener hopes that Ora will speak with ASCAP but if not he said, “we’re prepared to litigate.”

MyNorthwest has reached out to Ora and has not heard back.

Julia Dallas is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read her stories here. Follow Julia on X here and email her here.