Colombia House Goes Bankrupt

[geminibear]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/columbia-house-owner-files-for-bankruptcy-1439233090

 

For those of us of a certain age, this probably brings back a lot of nostalgia. How many of us got our first real taste of a variety of music from ordering records and tapes (yes records, we didn't call them vinyl). Later CD's

 

I grew up in rural Colorado where access to FM radio let alone a music store was difficult.

 

How many of us didn't return those unwanted albums in time, often causing trouble with the parental figures.

 

Shortly after I left for college my parents lost the RFD "rural farm delivery" and had to start driving to the post office in town for their mail. I always wondered if it was because I was not there, receiving bi-weekly deliveries of records and tapes.

 

Share your memories of Colombia House. For those of you old enough to remember.

 

~Gem~

[+ Robster]

So much nostalgia! I joined Columbia House and RCA (later BMG) soooo many times back in the day. I'd take advantage of their awesome introductory offers, buy however many I needed to fulfill my requirement, and immediately cancel. They'd inevitably ask me to come back, and I'd start all over again. First it was records, and then tapes, and later CDs. I even joined some of their video clubs, the ones where each month, you'd get a VHS tape (lol) with three or four episodes of a particular TV show, like I Love Lucy, Cheers, etc. I used to pay more for one of those damn tapes than a whole season on DVD would cost now.

 

Rob

[geminibear]

Thanks Rob for jogging my memory. I couldn't remember how it all worked.

 

That's right, the introductory offer, the viscous cycle over and over again! I think I even bought posters, tape & CD racks.

 

My mom always thought it was a pyramid scheme.

 

~Gem~

[Tonyko]

OMG one of my Aunt's 2nd husband was a VP at Columbia here in NY and when he died when I was in HS she opened a walk-in closet in their apt and said TAKE WHAT YOU WANT. It was FILLED with Columbia records ALL STILL SEALED IN PLASTIC. I took EVERY Broadway cast album! SHOWS that flopped shows I never heard of etc, what a Treasure Trove. Still sealed shows like "Mr President" the musical spoofing the first family that had the misfortune of opening right before the Kennedy asassination so it closed soon after, etc, albums like that. I STILL have them all but, (stupidly) I opened most.

[rvwnsd]

Like Robster, I was a lather, rinse, and repeat member of Columbia House and RCA/BMG. I learned to cancel and then play "hard to get" when they asked me to renew because the offers kept getting better. As the selections became less diverse and skewed too much toward pop and less to "alternative," I would select the few CDs that I appealed to me and then take whatever else was deemed "hot" and sell them to the used CD store.

 

My last purchase was a series of VHS tapes of the Carol Burnett Show. The day the last tape arrived they started offering DVDs.

[+ azdr0710]

I think everybody will get a huge laugh out of this.....man, I remember these....."look for the secret gold box!"....oh, man!!!

 

[rvwnsd]

Yep. I remember.

 

It was great when they went online, as the mailer usually had a limited selection of CDs.

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

My younger sister was a Columbia House member. Through Columbia House she ordered a Herman's Hermits album and she played it over and over and over.

 

I came to dislike Columbia House.

[+ Robster]

Sorry, I can't resist

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swA6lK3PNio

[+ dutchmuch]

In the 70s, Columbia House order forms were a staple of TV Guide, which back then was stapled.

[+ purplekow]

Like many, i was a yoyo member. I am ashamed to admit that I was not smart enough to consider selling them after getting them. I always found it hard to get 14 that I wanted but once I did, I had no problem finding the gold box and picking one more. I do not think I ever bought a tape, CD or VHS that didn't come from Columbia House. I am more surprised that they were still in business than in their bankruptcy in view of the abundance of free music on line.

[JuniorNYC]

Haha! I remember Columbia House, as well as BMG Music Club. It must have been in the very early 90s until about the beginning of 2000s for me. First with cassette tapes for one membership, which then transitioned to CDs. I was always obsessed with and had a broad interest in music at a very young age. I had a $5/week allowance that I saved and spent entirely on these clubs. I always preferred BMG because, as I remember, you received fewer albums initially, but had less of an obligation to purchase additional albums at an inflated price in order to fulfill your membership. Where as with Columbia, you got a lot (maybe twice as much) upfront but had to purchased more albums at the inflated price.

 

There was something magical about the stamps you had to tear off, lick and paste onto the order sheet. I would spend a few days lining them all up until I was finally not only ready do decide on my selection, but what order I wanted to paste the stamps onto the order form. When I got older, I learned that I could trade in my older CDs at the local record store and buy more albums (those that were part of record labels that didn't have a contract with either music clubs, like Virgin Records for instance - like finally getting my hands on the janet. album). I also remember the monthly opt-out responses you needed to respond to. They'd mail you a catalog monthly and have the featured album of the month based on your preferred music genre. I always had multiple memberships because I never liked a specific genre as my taste were pretty broad. Anyway, if you didn't respond by mailing them a post card indicating you did not want to receive the featured album that month, it was automatically sent to you. Hmm... perhaps that would be a great business plan for me as an escort? Haha!

 

Ah... so many memories. Napster, of course, changed all of that and opened up my mind to so much more music. However, nothing can beat the taste of those stamps, the anticipation waiting for those CDs to arrive in the mail, the sight of that large cardboard box of albums waiting in your mailbox or on doorstep coming home from school, the feeling of sliding those CDs open with a CD wrapper opener and the smell of a freshly opened album booklet. It was really so much more sexier back then.

[maninsoma]

Like many, i was a yoyo member. I am ashamed to admit that I was not smart enough to consider selling them after getting them. I always found it hard to get 14 that I wanted but once I did, I had no problem finding the gold box and picking one more. I do not think I ever bought a tape, CD or VHS that didn't come from Columbia House. I am more surprised that they were still in business than in their bankruptcy in view of the abundance of free music on line.

 

They actually stopped selling music several years ago. In more recent years, Columbia House was only selling videos (I think both dvd and blu-ray).

[maninsoma]

In their earlier days, joining, buying the required number of discs, quitting, and then rejoining was definitely the way to get the best price for new music -- assuming, of course, that one could either find 12 (or 14) titles at once that one wanted or that could be traded into a local store to get other music. In the later years, however, some of their promotions were so good that it no longer made sense to join/buy/quit/rejoin. I really liked their "buy one at half off, get everything else for $1.99/cd" deals. I could buy a box set at half price -- already less expensive than I could find elsewhere -- and then get unlimited titles for under $2/cd, meaning that another 4-cd box set would only cost $7.96. I may be mistaken, but I think they even started offering free shipping on occasion towards the end. I amassed a huge cd collection in part by buying a lot of cds through both Columbia House and BmgMusicService.

[Zman]

They actually stopped selling music several years ago. In more recent years, Columbia House was only selling videos (I think both dvd and blu-ray).

 

This may be the answer to my first thought when I heard about the bankruptcy: "How the $%&!! did they survive into 2015 before going bankrupt?"

 

I think their music club business model was dead as soon as Napster was invented. And now, of course, we get all the music we want for $5 month streaming and have for years.

 

I never joined back in the day. But I was often tempted. It seemed like such a smorgasbord to read through everything they had on offer.