Columbia House Record & Tape Club

At least 30.

Oh man! So many memories...I got at least 15 or so. There's a Goldbergs episode about this, it's fucking great. Remember the tapes had a pink line on the spine? So when you saw used tapes with that, you knew it was CH.

It was CDs for me. I belonged to both Columbia House, which was the better of the two, and BMG. I never got anything without paying for it. My favorite thing were the Miles Davis box sets, which cost so much less than you'd pay at a record store.

I'm surprised someone has based a tv show around these 70s/80s tape clubs by now for something different.

I think joined Columbia House and BMG four times. For some reason, one time I got vinyl. The other times I got cassettes.

I didn't have cassettes for very long but I did the LPs and CDs multiple times.

I think I paid when I was still living at my parents' house but after that.....nah.

I steel try to reech yuo !

I always contemplated it but got lost in those tiny pictures in the magazine ads. CAROLE BAYER SAGER had the most weirdly posed headshot. It almost looked calmly smug. Is that redundant? I thought so.

I wrecked my credit for a Stevie Nicks CD I didn’t want but didn’t return the monthly selection card in time

That's why you start an account under a pseudonym. I started one under Harry Peter.

There are only two types of people in the world. Those who return the card on time and those who don't.

This reminds me of their constant ads in “TV Guide” and “Family Circle”!

I remember that commercial with the Natalie Imbruglia song.

[quote] I wrecked my credit for a Stevie Nicks CD

[quote] BMG didn’t fuck around

Did they kick you in the cuntbone?

We had a turntable and decent (not super-expensive) cassette recording equipment. If you bought a good blank (eg, Maxell) and recorded from clean vinyl, the end product was audibly and noticeably better than those pre-recorded cassette tapes.

So, no, did not partake of those tapes. If anything, I would have purchased vinyl.

When I was a kid, I overheard the neighbor lady telling my mom that once you joined one of these clubs they would never let you out of it. I took her completely seriously and thought they would NEVER let you leave - you were in it for life!

I do not recall how many at the time but do recall my dad writing them a letter stating I was 12 years old - far too young to be able to agree to any conditions or contracts - I never heard from them again.

It was a great deal.

R17 Similar. I remember begging my mom to pay the bill for me and she laughed and said any contracti with a 12 year old is worthless and only a moron would let a 12 year old sign it.

They also sold CDs. Ughhh those were the days.

I never joined one of these things, can someone please explain how it worked, because I don't know exactly what you're talking about with cards and all.

You agree to join the record and tape club you select whatever number of items it says in the ad. If it is 11, they have a long list of records and tapes to select from. After they receive your completed form, you are enrolled. They will send you your package of selected items. Then you are obligated over the course of let's say 18 months to purchase 6 records or tapes. Each month they send you their updated catalog along with the album of the month. If you do not respond by a certain date that you do not want the album of the month, you will receive it along with a bill. You can chose to opt out each month or pick what you prefer. This was actually a good way to start or build your music collection, and record companies had a alternate method for selling their records directly and making a bigger profit per item than just relying solely on record stores and department stores.

I joined the RCA Music Service in Junior High and loved it. It was a great way to build a music collection as a teenager, especially for those in rural areas without much access to record stores. Thankfully I was an organized teen and always sent the form back if I didn’t want the selection of the month. If you were lax with your paperwork you’d end up with that unwanted Conway Twitty album.

It seems they always had ads in TV Guide.

R21, IIRC, you’d get something like 13 or 20 cassettes for $1, to start out with. Thereafter, you had to buy X number of cassettes per month at a higher price. Apparently, it was hard to cancel.

A dollar, R25? You paid too much, sir! It was, in fact, a penny! And the sign up form had a penny shape where you could scotch tape your penny payment on it.

Wikipedia

I joined several times, albums, cassettes, CDs, and always fulfilled my obligation, but usually by forgetting to return the card the required three times (or was it five?) It was still worth it for the big box of free stuff.

Also, there was a random theory in my college town that Columbia House was largely responsible for post office personnel’s general crankiness, what with the endless boxes of free cassettes and cds, along with the delivery and subsequent return of the unwanted monthly selections.

R28 They must have really hated it when people mainly listened to albums, then,

If I recall correctly, though, the prices for albums abd shipping were nuts do once you hit the freebies, you really ended up overpaying abd that's why do msny people never purchased the balance of the commitment. Like in the late 80's, when a vinyl album might be $8.99, they'd charge $12.99 and shipping and handling would each be a separate $5.99 charge so you'd get a bill for $24 when that same album would cost you $8.99 if you'd have just gotten off your ass and gone to the mall. And if you switched to CDs, their prices on CDs were around $22 each.

Yeah, they got you on the shipping charges. So if you intended on fulfilling the required number of purchases it was always best to buy several at once, rather than just the one at a time approach.

Is R22 an AI bot?

R32 I've been called a lot of things in my life but never an AI bot.

But you can Call Me Al.

R32, No, R22 was answering my question, which I appreciated,

R33 is Paul Simon

R32 is an idiot

Can I call you Betty, R33?

I know this is extremely tangential - but this is my favorite "call you Betty."

My dad knew that each time he cancelled they’d offer him 10 free CDs to stay, so he kept cancelling over and over.

As a film nerd, I built a nice size DVD collection from the Columbia House movie club. I think my DVD of Casablanca was from Columbia House, and I still have it.

Do you guys remember later going to used record/tape stores and how you would be able to spot the Columbia tapes? They had a hot pink line under the title. I would see those and laugh and shake my head. I know how you got this Sade tape, garage sale haver. I did the same.

R41, see R2.

Oh thanks R42. This thread was started awhile ago so I didn't remember. I'm so glad it's gaining traction.

I didn’t realize those pink lines indicated a record club release. I thought they were just the design. I know on CDs they’d have text indicating it was manufactured for Columbia House or BMG

Does anyone know when each of the above services ended?

Were they all dead by the mid 90s?

[Quote]I joined several times, albums, cassettes, CDs, and always fulfilled my obligation.

Ooh, goody two-shoes.

R45 : RCA Music Service morphed into BMG in the late 80s. I think they and Columbia House were dead by around 2000. Digital/streaming killed their concept.

I always wondered how they enforced these. There wasn’t any place on the form to put credit card info and it wasn’t something that was worth going to court over. I’m sure they sent letters trying to get people to hold up their part of the deal, but what else could they do?

I signed up for both BMG and Columbia under so many different names. I’m I would never return the cards, I would always just return to sender the tape or record when it came. After a while, they just gave up.

For BMG you only had to buy one more to fulfill your contract. For Columbia, you had to buy more (maybe 5?) but the selection was much better.

To return the cards, you have to pay for a stamp. I wasn’t going to do that.

Many friends just wrote letters saying they were underage to break any contract

I signed up with so many variations of my name.

Jack

Jac K.

J. ack

I think the records were thinner. Everything was manufactured cheaply

I always looked forward to that really BIG Columbia House section of the Sunday newspaper. I got my share of 8 track tapes. Did anyone ever actually pay them?

Someone must have been paying because they were in business for a long time.

I always loved the enthusiasm of the people in those magazine ads.

There was also the RCA record club where you'd make your selections using the stamps that were mailed to you.

I was the goody two shoes who warned my friend he'd get in trouble if he just took the cassettes and then blew off the rest of the bargain. He did it anyway and somehow no consequences. I was envious.

I thought double albums counting as 2 selections was kind of a ripoff.

This was a very good way to start building a record collection. Many people opted for cassettes or 8-track tapes instead, which to me was the wring approach since vinyl had better sound quality.

It was so much fun to get that first box with all the records in it.

My first box was pretty gay...it was all Olivia Newton John, Helen Reddy, ABBA, and Captain & Tenniele.

I then made the mistake of adding Book of the Month Club (I know my first box had The Shining in it) and then I think I added another book club and at age 13 I was nervously juggling multiple accounts.

It got out of control.

This brings back so many great memories, and I still have many of the cassette tapes I had ordered. I was a member of Columbia House until BMG’s parent company bought the company I worked for. Employees were able to ordered a ridiculous number of items at no cost once a quarter.

I contained them deep inside of me weekly for so many years…oye!!!

To be honest it was hard for me to find enough records I liked or wanted to fill the first orders. I think I ended up with 10 copies of Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits just to round out the orders.

[quote]Each month they send you their updated catalog along with the album of the month. If you do not respond by a certain date that you do not want the album of the month, you will receive it along with a bill. You can chose to opt out each month or pick what you prefer.

Not gonna lie, some of you all are literally lazy AF! How hard is it to just click No each month? Do you guys have as much trouble opting out of Blue Apron meals every week?

Those double red lines on the Columbia House tapes are instant nostalgia for me and easy to spot. The RCA club ones were usually even worse with the black generic card with white typeface that looked like it got punched out on an old electric typewriter. A decent number of those cassettes still play for me though…

Despite your faux anachronistic naiveté R66 you know full well that "not opting out" is how every subscription service scam actually makes money.

R17, I did a variation on that trick several times. It always worked. I'd wait until there were enough albums I wanted. I'd send away. They'd arrive. I'd fail to finish the obligation. I'd send a letter basically saying, "I'm a kid." They'd release me from the obligation. Once again I'd wait until there were enough albums I wanted for myself or as gifts. Re-sign up. And do the same thing again. Must've done it 4 or 5 times before I started thinking "I'm getting too old to get away with this."

My mother STILL gets junk mail for my Columbia House alias.

(It was my middle name as my first name and my first name as my last name.)

I joined all of the time when I was a kid, and I would get grounded EVERY time one of those boxes would show up in the mail.

I think a lot of us took “1cent STEAL” literally!

I read an article somewhere that it was a federal law that these types of mail order clubs were required to provide customers with a "positive option" membership upon request. This means instead of a negative option (if you don't return the card, you're getting the John Tesh CD) you get the positive option version (if you want the John Tesh CD, you have to return the card). There was nothing in the Columbia House materials about this option, even in the finest of the fine print. Figuring it couldn't hurt to try, I wrote a letter formally requesting this option and mailed it to the address of the corporate headquarters in Terre Haute, IN. It took a few months, but eventually I started receiving a different version of the card in my envelope with the positive option.

This made it so easy to keep up with the membership. Being a big music buyer, I fulfilled my obligation in a little over a year. After that, you shift into a new membership category where for every CD you bought at full price, you'd get another for free (plus postage). They also had different types of specials throughout the year offering even more free CDs. I was very happy with the service and it saved me quite a bit of money over the years. I kept it for well over a dozen years through the early 2000s, when we drifted apart as the world converted to MP3s.

The funny thing about this is that every single person that found out I had a Columbia House membership for over a decade roasted me mercilessly, even when I explained the positive option thing. "You're SUPPOSED to order the twelve and just forget about it!" I thought music lovers would want to do what I did when they found out how much I saved, but I never persuaded anyone to try it.