Columbia House Files for Bankruptcy
 

Brings back memories from childhood... used to love opening up my 12 CD's for a penny....


Columbia House owner files for bankruptcy

Surprised they made it this long....

Naw, I remember it as twelve 8-tracks.

I remember abusing the hell out of those 12 cds for a penny or whatever ti was...using different names...spellings...slightly different street addresses...etc.

These days of computers make that impossible to do...

So thank you for all the free music Columbia House

Myself and a few friends did the same thing until we all got busted by our parents when they wanted to know why we had 100's of new CD's xD.

And BMG Music was a good one.

I would do it multiple times and send back the bill marked "deceased". Rinse and repeat.
I had quite a music collection.

Between BMG and CH, I got 60 new CDs in a two week timeframe, LOL. I had quite the collection.

Flashback, did Columbia & BMG back in the day. Now can't remember the last time I bought a full CD. :2 cents:

Glad to know I wasn't the only one abusing - I mean, USING - the Columbia House thing. Tape a penny to the postcard!! LOL

Oh the names I would come up with, all with the same address.....LOL Amazing they would send package after package to the same address. They must've thought I had a whole house full of music lovers. :)

Funny, the wife and I were talkin' about Columbia House a few months ago - wonderin' how they ever made a profit with all the fraud that went on back in the day.

They must've had a fair quantity of legit customers who actually bought full-price tapes/CDs after they got the freebies.

There were a few loop holes in their system :1orglaugh

How the fuck Did they make money?
What was their model?

Every Columbia House CD/tape/LP had a 'Columbia House' logo on it. This meant they were technically 'promo' items. Which meant the artists did not receive royalties on any Columbia House (or BMG) CD/tape/LP sent out.

Then, each month you would get the latest Columbia House CD/tape/LP and then be charged $16.95 (maybe more) til you canceled.

It was 100% profit for Sony and BMG. Maybe now because of the cost of manufacturing and shipping the whole operation is a loss.

I don't remember my Columbia House cd's being branded with "Columbia House," but I do remember BMG was labeled like that. :2 cents:

God only knows how many accounts I had at both BMG and Columbia House....

By the time I moved over to CDs, the local music store had a "dollar" bin for used CDs. I stocked up.

Still have all of those CDs, nearly a thousand of them. They are all loaded up on my iPod now.

They were incredibly subtle about it. The CDs would have Columbia (later, Sony) in the lower right corner and the promos/Columbia House ones would just have the 'House' after so you had to look to make sure.

I know all this because I tried to sell my Columbia LPs one day (years ago) and the guy went through them all, rejecting them because they were 'cheap Columbia House versions' and not the 'real thing'. LOL

Sign of the times but they had a 60 year run.

Adapt or die ...

Great article and documentary about the shady Columbia House operation - how the FTC allowed this to go on for decades is beyond me. I'm guessing the owner of XPics must have been a Columbia House customer - same tactics.

People weren't even getting the real product, Columbia House had their own manufacturing factories. And musical artists got paid shit, Columbia House had licensing deals with the music labels, when Columbia House sold a million CD's of an album it wasn't like selling a million CD's through brick and mortar stores.

Four Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind ?8 CDs for a penny? · Expert Witness · The A.V. Club

Dinosaurs

wow like someone said can't believe they made it this long

i vaguely remember them, was it always a penny or a dollar? did it change when rates of postal service went up?

http://i.imgur.com/Vtp71SX.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/Vtp71SX.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/Vtp71SX.gif

thieves candy would be proud