For sure there was a sweet spot to being in the club for a while. The regular (annual? quarterly? seasonal?) promotions where you earned up free albums or reduced shipping or something somehow made it worthwhile in my mind. That and the “I’m way smarter than they are” appeal of getting a good deal.
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I tried to join as a teen… and they wouldn’t let me, because I was underage.
At some point, my father did, and every so often he’d let me pick something out of the catalog. I can still remember searching through the catalog to find interesting things. He was in it for a few years, then canceled it, after both of us had pretty much lost interest.
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When I finally broke down and bought a CD player in the 90s, I had memberships to both Columbia House and BMG. It was a quick way to build a CD collection for cheap. Once I exhausted the inventory of my interests in their catalogs, I dumped them both and began buying CDs through local music retailer A&B Sound. A&B Sound had the lowest prices for CDs of anywhere in North America for years and I was able to walk into the stores and browse what was on special whenever I wanted. It was awesome.
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Ah yes. I recall one time getting a misprint once from them.
Album was supposed to be Ministry - The land of rape and honey
And it appeared to be! But the music itself was smooth jazz.
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I remember a kid in junior high who said Aldo Nova was his favorite musician. I believe Mr. Nova later went on to produce Celine Dion albums.
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Do you still have it? That would be worth serious money to somebody.
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I am appalled by this behaviour. As are my flatmates Dr C.Jimbo, Coupon Jambon, and Cappy Jumbo III.
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Alas no. I sent it back for a replacement.
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I remember unexpectedly getting censored albums. I can’t remember if they used cuts or silence, but definitely multiple times got an embarrassing copy I couldn’t play around my cool friends.
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Ah! I would have eaten the cost and sent it to Al Jorgensen.
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Now I think maybe I signed up for Columbia House after doing BMG in college and Columbia House sent me a censored Beck album and i quit them immediately.
I wouldn’t brag about that, either.
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I knew a kid in college who used his real name. He had family in the UK so he would send Columbia a change of address form and they would cancel his membership. No exports allowed.
I’m curious what that Christian LP is that he puts on his turntable in the video. The “Word” label is known for some oddball Christian rock concept albums.
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Yes, my roommates, B.L. Zebub, Lou Cifer, and Mary H. Littlelamb, are as well.
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I feel like I’ve found my people (OK, boomer).
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Okay Xer?
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I think I did sign up for this and quit shortly thereafter, paying for one album. It was only after that that I was told that the correct gambit was to give them a forwarding address to Canada, at which point they’d give up and send a letter releasing you from any further obligation.
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Most people can’t figure out how it could have worked economically–after all, there was a ton of fraud, and the albums were expensive if Columbia was buying them at wholesale…
in 1983, they reached out to me because they were going to launch the Columbia House software club. (I was a young brand manager at Spinnaker at the time)
I said, “well, I’m not going to say yes, but sure, come meet with me and tell me how this whole thing could possibly work…”
Here’s who you actually were stealing from:
The artists got ZERO on any album that was given away. They only got a royalty on the albums that sold.
And so all the labels were open to doing the deal with Columbia because it was free promo (most people saw the ads, but didn’t join the club). Columbia had to pay for the ‘breakage’ and the artists got almost nothing.
Other trivia: Columbia knew that they couldn’t collect from minors (if your parents didn’t sign the deal, there wasn’t actually a deal.) So, all you had to do was write to them with how old you were and they stopped dunning you.
fwiw…
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Way back in the day, my best friend’s mother worked at the Columbia House pressing and shipping plant in Terre Haute, IN. He snagged a ton of good records through her.
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This was how I acquired my copy of Frampton Comes Alive!
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