Columbia House / BMG Music Service RIP

Just discovered that neither music service exists anymore -- victims, I suppose, of the general collapse of the record industry (CH survives as a DVD service).

To think of the 100s of LPs, cassettes and, eventually, CDs I purchased through these places! At one point BMG Music Service had a pretty extraordinary catalogue, including those Def American / Infinite Zero reissues of the Monks, Suicide, Gang of Four, etc.

My friend (who is also RIP) had a scam where he would subscribe to CH under the name and address of a neighbor in his parents' apartment building, then steal their package when it arrived. I suppose the neighbors had to talk to CH and get the membership cancelled? I never had the gumption to try this myself. But I did subscribe to get the 10 (was it 12 at one point?) $0.01 CDs, then fulfill my membership, quit, and re-subscribe all over again. In this way teenage and pre-teenage me built up a rather large collection of music. I would even say that I wouldn't be the same person I am now without BMG and CH -- at least, I wouldn't have nearly the same tastes without having been able to sample so many classical, blues, country, etc. reissues without much financial risk in the days before downloading.

Share your Columbia House / BMG Music Service stories/laments here.

(hmm, funny they went out of business...)

I had a friend who worked in the campus mailroom when I first started college, and we opened up about 20 fraudulent accounts between the two of us.

The one time I was a legit member of Columbia House is how dove headfirst into non-Top 40/non-metal music. I think my first shipment of 12 included The Queen is Dead, Life's Too Good, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Echo & The Bunnymen and some other stuff... all on glorious and pristine CASSETTES!

when was this? in the late '80s/early '90s i carefully combed through every issue of CH's "alternative" catalogue, and bought all of the smiths, depeche mode, etc. etc.

i also remember the scholastic record club, connected i suppose to the more famous scholastic book club -- i got my first record, at age 9 or 10, from there: "michael jackson's greatest hits" on motown.

BTW both services -- CH and BMG -- have been replaced by something called "yourmusic.com" which sells CDs for $6.99 apiece. bleh.

My legit account started in early 1989. My fake accounts were in 1992/93.

And yeah, the reason I got all that stuff in my introductory shipment the first time is because a friend was already a member and let me browse the good catalogue instead of the one-page ad on the back of the Parade in the Sunday paper.

I remember calculating what the minimum per cd cost would be with both plans. Most recently, it was $4.29 per cd with BMG I think, including shipping, and that was only if you avoided most offers they sent out. There were some offers worth taking, if they had free shipping and buy 1, get 2 free maybe. When those came, I jumped. I also bought a lot of jazz box sets through them pretty recently, all the Miles Columbia boxes they had, for so cheap it was silly.

I still get pissed off when I'm at a record show and some guy is trying to sell new unwrapped BMG disks for $8 or more. You can usually tell it's a BMG disk b/c they print "BMG Record Club" or something similar on the UPC code. I probably have a bunch of BMG-bought cds still; mostly I bought 80s and 90s indie rock, hip hop, and country.

Yes, we hoarded the good catalogue and passed it between friends (who we would then sign up and get the 4 free friend cds).

I've had legit Columbia House and BMG accounts probably 7 times each.

I used to subscribe to BMG, have another account join through the first account to get the free ones, buy the one CD, quit, and repeat that cycle over and over for years using variations of my name and my wife's name up until maybe two years ago.

When I'd math it all out they'd end up being like $4 apiece or something like that so it was totally worth it. There was always something or other that I never got around to checking out that was worth buying that cheap. I can't even imagine what percentage of my CDs have the "Manufactured by BMG" line instead of the UPC tag.

I only did Columbia House once, due to having to buy six or seven albums after the initial shipment, compared to BMG's one. I remember getting 3 Feet High and Rising on cassette this way in 9th grade.

I had forgotten about this completely. Good to know that debt is taken care of. I ripped these guys off so badly, and all I did was change a letter in my name each time, but they kept sending me cds.

yeah they had shockingly little interest in putting an end to such practices. i always figured the reason was that for every one of us ripping them off, there were 10 yuppies who just went ahead and let them charge for the "featured" CD each month.

I don't know how they ever turned a profit. Anytime the topic of Columbia House or BMG comes up with friends or on the internets, all stories point to how they could be scammed for personal gain.

well, they often manufactured their own CDs. and i read, several times, that artists were paid special, lower royalty rates for music-club sales.

if you want to imagine the big music labels as machiavellian, you can imagine that getting kids hooked on music buying via the music clubs was a good deal -- after all, many of us have gone on to purchase a lot more CDs for a lot more than $4.50.

Yeah, all the friends with whom I exchanged free cds in middle and high school are still music freaks. Without it, I might have resorted to cassette piracy or losing interest in recorded music acquisition.

I remember my brother buying a bunch of cassettes through Columbia House when he was pretty young (sixth or seventh grade?) and it was a bunch of Madonna tapes---which he then denied buying and kept hidden from me. I guess he was embarrassed for me to know that he dug the Dick Tracy soundtrack. Poor guy, a closet lover of pop, continuing today.

Don't forget to check out Chris Wilcha's The Targets Shoots First, a devastating documentary about the dissolution of Gen X/alt.rock camaraderie at Columbia House office. There's tons of material in it on how CH operates. It's one of my very favorite films of the decade.

I ended up with a copy of Sonic Youth's Experimental Jet Set because I didn't cancel soon enough...this was back in the cassette era. I forget whether I ever paid for it... It might be the only one of the columbia house cassettes I still listen to on a regular basis.

mark me as a CH/BMG scammer too. My ultimate scheme was to bring these CDs to the Warehouse (RIP) which back then had a policy of letting you exchange opened CDs (and in most cases could be persuaded to do so even without a receipt). Bless their souls.

yeah this was sad, BMG Music Club

Don't forget to check out Chris Wilcha's The Targets Shoots First, a devastating documentary about the dissolution of Gen X/alt.rock camaraderie at Columbia House office.

I watched this last night and was kind of unconvinced by it. It wasn't at all clear to me how and why this dissolution happened. The alt.rock magazine was working well, it was universally acclaimed, sales were up, management was happy, they were getting letters of support from members, and yet suddenly the whole thing just unravelled. At the end of the film I had no insight into what went wrong or why the guy quit.

Cassettes I obtained inadvertently b/c of failure to send in monthly CH mailer (I had ticked the "hard rock/heavy metal" box as my preferred genre when I sent my penny scotch-taped to a ripped out square from the back of a Parade magazine membership "application"): Roll the Bones by Rush; Vixen's second record; albums by Steelheart, Bad English & Blue Murder. These were received when I had already moved on to the mopey British post-punk phase of my adolescent listening habits, so I didn't give them their proper due & probably turned them in at some point, still in their cellophane, for whatever scratch trade-in value I could get. I never paid for them, either, but I was 12, so what were they going to do.

A year or so later, when I was a paperboy, I pulled the regular CH/BMG grift a few times. Some of the customers who stiffed me on Xmas tips were rewarded with fraudulent accounts in their name, while I became the envy of my friends w/ my inexplicably proliferating tape collection. Good times..

BMG had those cheap-ass white cassettes & sleeves w/ no liner notes.

any idea where I could find this Wilcha doc mentioned?

I downloaded it off of Karagarga but that is a members-only site.

Selling off so many thousands of CD's for a penny each, no wonder they're out of business...

I don't know how they ever turned a profit. Anytime the topic of Columbia House or BMG comes up with friends or on the internets, all stories point to how they could be scammed for personal gain.

At the same time, when I signed up for an account with CH as a teenager, I had to do it secretly because my entire family was like "noooo, they'll rip you off! You'll regret this!". Even my friends warned me, and were amazed later when I had all these cheap CDs and was able to get out of the "club" with no hassle.

It's funny to imagine CH/BMG execs trying to figure out how to fix the real issue of customers ripping them off, while also trying to counter the public perception that they rip others off.

          SECRETARY
          Oh-Professor Gopnik. It's Dick Dutton again.
          LARRY
          (BLANK)
          Dick Dutton.
          LARRY'S OFFICE
          He sits in and picks up the phone.
          LARRY
          Hello?
          VOICE
          Hello, Mr. Gopnik, this is Dick Dutton from the Columbia
          Record Club. I'm calling because it is now, what, four
          months and we have yet to receive your first payment.
          LARRY
          I-there's some mistake. I'm not a member of the
          Columbian Record Club.
          VOICE
          Sir, you are Lawrence Gopnik of 1425 Flag Avenue South?
          LARRY
          No, I live at the Jolly Roger.
          VOICE
          Excuse me?
          LARRY
          No, I-well, yes, okay.
          VOICE
          Yes you are Lawrence Gopnik?
          LARRY
          Okay.
          VOICE
          Okay means...
          LARRY
          Okay, yes, Lawrence Gopnik, yes.
          VOICE
          Okay, well, you received your twelve introductory albums
          and you have been receiving the monthly main selection for
          four months now-
          LARRY
          "The monthly main selection?" Is that a record? I didn't
          ask for any records.
          VOICE
          To receive the monthly main selection you do nothing.
          YOU-
          LARRY
          That's right! I haven't done anything!
          VOICE
          Yes, that's why you receive the monthly main selection.
          The last
          LARRY
          But I-
          VOICE
          The last one was Santana Abraxis. You-
          LARRY
          I didn't ask for Santana Abraxis!
          VOICE
          You request the main selection at the retail price by doing
          nothing. It is automatically mailed to you. Plus shipping
          and handling. You're about to-
          LARRY
          I can't afford a new record every month! I haven't asked
          FOR-
          VOICE
          You're about to get Cosmo's Factory, sir. The June main
          selection. And you haven't-
          LARRY
          Look, something is very wrong! I don't want Santana
          Abraxis! I've just been in a terrible auto accident!
          Beat.
          VOICE
          I'm sorry sir.
          LARRY
          Well-thank you. But I-
          VOICE
          Are you okay?
          LARRY
          Yes. Yes, no one was hurt.
          VOICE
          Okay. Good. Well, you had fourteen days to listen to
          Santana Abraxis and return it if you weren't completely
          satisfied. You did nothing. And now you-
          LARRY
          I didn't ask for Santana Abraxis! I didn't listen to Santana
          Abraxis! I didn't do anything!
          The secretary is sticking her head in.
          SECRETARY
          Sir.
          VOICE
          Sir. Please. We can't make you listen to the record. We-

Where is that from?

Where is that from?

― anagram, Sunday, November 15, 2009 11:04 AM (15 seconds ago)

Just realized that I actually have seen that documentary - but it is part of the long list of movies that I know I've seen but remember next to nothing about.

It's from A Serious Man

i should see that movie then

It's good.

I still get the yourmusic emails, but haven't gotten around to checking it out. It seemed like their back catalog selections started drying up about five years ago. I must have gone through three dozen membership cycles over the years. It was a goldmine for a 10-12 year old kid to be able to get a shipment of six to eight records in one shipment for under $13. I switched to tapes while in high school, and CDs in college. Around 1990 I wrote to RCA (not sure if they became BMG yet) asking if they could send me a list of their entire catalog, and they did! I'd say the mid-90s was their peak as far as back catalog availability, when I filled out my collection with Bowie, Costello, jazz and blues/soul box sets.

I think the number of people who liked to brag about scamming the clubs were far outweighed by the majority who didn't bother or were wary of committing mail fraud. Obviously their business model worked just fine for many years, with the great deals balanced out by all the inflated shipping and handling charges. I was pretty careful and kept track of average costs after each membership cycle, and usually averaged under $4 a CD. By manufacturing the CDs, their profits were fine until memberships most have plummeted the past 8 years or so. It's too bad really.

yourmu✧✧✧@yourmu✧✧✧.c✧✧ to me show details May 18 (1 day ago)

Please read this email carefully. It contains important information about your subscription.

This is to let you know that yourmusic.com will close on June 29, 2011. Here's some important information regarding your current subscription:

You will be able to shop at yourmusic.com through June 29, 2011. Watch your mailbox for exciting sales and special offers in the coming weeks! Please note that supplies of certain titles may be limited...

Thanks for being a yourmusic subscriber!
yourmusic.com

$4.99 CDs this weekend! Everything must go!

All you have to do to get $4.99 CDs is
add your selections to your shopping cart
type the code 499SALE into the "Enter Promotion Code:" box
click the "update" button, then proceed to checkout.

yourmusic.com

They had a brief 30% off sale ($4.89) two weeks ago. I bagged 27 discs of either "Sure, I'll take a shot for $5" (V/A - Quiet Storm: Gold!, Best of Louis Prima!) or "I never would have spent more than $5 for this" (Neil Young - Old Ways!, The Cure - 4:13 Dream!).

My friend from school did this throughout the 90s til it closed. After 2 years he would register from his grans. When he got his own place he flipped between that and his folks address. I dunno how these things made money as everyone seems to have diddled them.

Pretty entertaining discussion of Columbia House by former employees, including the guy who made "The Target Shoots First" and Sasha Frere-Jones-Smythe-Smythe:

http://www.avclub.com/article/four-columbia-house-insiders-explain-shady-math-be-219964

Enjoyed this. Definitely remember in the 90% there being a sense at many offices that you didn't really have to do much. Feels like less of a thing now.

yeah, i've never adjusted to that change.

Oh man, I forgot about that "Santana Abraxas" scene in A Serious Man. That cracked me up. Very Coen-esque.

what a fascinating article.
no sark.
i really enjoyed reading that, ta for the link.

Yeah that was pretty great, just knowing how many other pre-internet music nerds who lived in the middle of nowhere were pulling the same scams I was doing, invoking what seemed to be the magical power of the RETURN TO SENDER on the package, etc.

They seem to have still been around in some form--until today:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/columbia-house-purveyor-8-cds-1-cent-declares-bankrutpcy-n407381

"Columbia House was founded in 1955. It closed the music club, which once offered deals like eight CDs for a penny, in 2010."

Wonder what in the world they were doing for the last 5 years.

Selling DVDs, according to the opening post itt.

oh, der

I hate how my barcode scanner never recognizes the UPC on BMG / Columbia House-sourced discs

Rot in hell, music clubs!

I didn't read the article closely enough--I guess this isn't really news.