Goodbye to ‘Goodbye Earl’: Baltimore’s Ottobar ordered to pay $18.5K over unlicensed songs by The Chicks, A-ha

Listen to this article

A federal magistrate awarded more than $18,000 in statutory damages and attorney’s fees to Broadcast Music, Inc. and three music publishers after Baltimore music venue Ottobar conceded liability in a copyright infringement case.

The performance rights organization, better known as BMI, and the publishers sued the storied venue and its owner for the “unauthorized public use” of three songs during karaoke: “Take On Me” by A-ha, “(I Just) Died in Your Arms” by Cutting Crew and “Goodbye Earl” by The Chicks. BMI moved for summary judgment last month, requesting U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Mark Coulson to award $20,000 in statutory damages for each of the three performances.

The venue’s management and its lawyer, Baltimore-area administrative law attorney Peter Prevas, did not return requests for comment.

Originally opened in downtown Baltimore in 1997, the indie-rock performance venue moved to its current North Howard Street location in 2001 and was sold in 2018 to longtime bartender Tecla Tesnau. Although its ground-level area mostly hosts live music acts, the upstairs portion is a bar area that features weekly karaoke and trivia nights.

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Maryland was filed last year after BMI sent a “music researcher” to surveil karaoke in the venue’s Otto Upstairs area, documenting which songs were performed on two separate nights and making audio recordings of the performances.

BMI, the largest performing rights organization in the U.S., collects blanket license fees from businesses to perform songs from its catalog of over 22 million songs and distributes royalties to members whose works were performed.

The company’s attorneys wrote in a complaint that the organization reached out to Ottobar over 30 times since 2023, seeking for the venue to sign a blanket music licensing agreement and threatening legal consequences for unauthorized use of its songs. They wrote in a motion for summary judgment that the current licensing fee would cost Ottobar more than $4,800 annually and would have cost the venue over $14,000 since October 2023 had it signed an agreement then.

The music investigator who visited the venue last May drafted a “certified infringement report” for BMI that included a timestamped list of songs, a floorplan of the upstairs area, and photos of patrons and karaoke DJs. Following the first visit, BMI sent a letter saying it was willing to resolve the matter but without a response would “refer this matter to our attorneys for whatever action they deem necessary.”

The organization sued in September alongside three of its publisher members: Sony Music Publishing, EMI Blackwood Music and All Clear Music, which own the copyrights to the three songs.

In response to BMI’s summary judgment motion, Ottobar’s attorney wrote earlier this month that the venue and its owner conceded liability and didn’t oppose partial summary judgment against the defendants but opposed an immediate decision on damages.

In his Tuesday order, Coulson permanently enjoined Ottobar from “further infringement of any copyrighted musical compositions licensed by BMI.”

Coulson ruled that despite BMI’s request for $60,000 in damages and its argument that it was entitled to up to $150,000, he found that the “circumstances here warrant such a high deterring impact.” But also considering the infringement was willful, he landed on 2.5 times the annual licensing fee, or slightly over $12,000, as the appropriate damages. He also awarded the plaintiffs $6,500 in attorney’s fees.

BMI and the three music publishers were represented by Marie J. Ignozzi of the Owings Mills-based RKW Law Group.