Entrapta310
:umad?:
That was before napster and limewire came out. 
Anyone Remember Columbia House 10 cd's for a penny
- Thread starter avon barksdale
- Start date
i remember the vhs tapes
mom would always let me choose two
those were the days
mom would always let me choose two
those were the days
When that package came in with your cd's! 
The most goonish fraudulent thing I ever did in my life was not paying for them
I'm paying for it with the terrible Mcdonalds food and service I received tonight
The most goonish fraudulent thing I ever did in my life was not paying for them
I'm paying for it with the terrible Mcdonalds food and service I received tonight
That's f*cking true....I remember that shyt. Me and my brother was like 
, we can get them a bunch of cds/dvds,e tc shyt but we know can't cause our parents wouldn't let us to do that shyt. They put us like 
and we would be like 
.....We jus don't understand how this work and now it makes sense and had us 
when get older.
Neo. The Only. The One.
THE ONE
I remember reading magazines and always seeing Columbia House and BMG advertisements all the time. All those offers for like 10 CDs for a penny each or 5 DVDs for a quarter each and I wondered, naively, how those companies made any of their money. Now, many many years older and quite a bit wiser, I quickly realized that the profit margins of many products that we see is significantly higher than what we would originally anticipate and that the whole instant gratification concept was roaring strong even back in the 80s.
Take for example, the standard offer from Columbia House these days (who is still around, much to my surprise). You get 5 DVDs for $0.49 each with free shipping with an obligation of 5 DVDs over the next two years. The DVDs at regular price are $19.95 a pop plus shipping and processing. That puts the total price at $102.20 plus S&P, which makes the price around $10.22 a DVD plus shipping and handling. There are special offers and stuff but ultimately youre paying about twelve bucks I bet after all is said and done for each DVD at the minimum. How much do you think those DVDs cost Columbia House? Probably a few dollars at most considering you can get them at bargain basement Wal-Mart for a few bucks too and they have skinny profit margins.
The big thing here isnt so much how much they make, but how little they make it seem that youll be spending. Five DVDs at $0.49 cents you get five DVDs now with the obligation of only five more over the next two years. Does this sound like anything else? Yeah, it sounds like every other consumeristic thing out there getting you to obligate your money now for a great deal that turns into an average deal later on. Credit cards? Check. Payday loans? Check.
Considering Columbia House celebrated their 50th anniversay in 2005, I guess the whole instant gratification thing isnt an entirely new concept. (And BMG, the one with the 50 CDs for five duckets ads way back when, now actually owns Columbia House)
Mane I did it twice and I never paid a cent for those cd's
I was young tho.... as an adult, I would have paid my bill
the young me didn't care...
my eyes lit up
when my cd's came in the mailbe sitting there listening to the jams on my boombox like
this track go hard
Only got 1 CD outta this.
Damn.
Damn.
avon barksdale
i want my corners
they would be rich if everybody paid the money they owe from fake names 
"
Columbia House, the Spotify of the '80s, is dead
By Bryan Bishop on August 10, 2015 05:13 pm
There was a time in the not-too-distant past where you couldn't just open Spotify, your favorite torrent client, or iTunes and get hold of a song you wanted to hear. No, you had to obtain actual physical goods that they sold in things called stores. That is, of course, unless you were a member of the Columbia House music club.
Columbia House offered you Incredible Deals™ when you signed up: you'd get a bunch of free albums for a penny, and in turn you promised to buy a set number of albums over the coming year. (To make things easy for you, Columbia House would automatically send you some albums unless you told them not to.) Mail-order convenience was big back then, and the idea of a subscription music service that came to your door was pretty appealing. But times change and mediums mutate, and now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Columbia House has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was an ugly ending. Revenues for Columbia House peaked in 1996 at $1.4 billion, but last year the company declared net revenue of just $17 million. Hell, it hadn't even been in the music business since 2010.
But I'm not here to cry for Columbia House. I'm here to remember.
I'm not sure where I first heard of the service, but I do know what finally pulled me in was an ad in TV Guide. It was a fancy, fold-out ad, probably with "1 cent" in big red letters. That penny was the only thing you'd need to pay to get the first collection of eight records (10 if you took advantage of the bonus albums!), and my pre-teenaged self couldn't get over the incredible bargain. I'd pore over the rest of the ad — literally just a list of artists and album names — like I was Ralphie in A Christmas Story, entranced by the potential and wonder.
I'd perused them before, but the problem was I could never really find enough albums I wanted to fill that initial order. That was the trick with Columbia House; due to the agreements in play, they actually didn't have records from everybody in the world. Columbia House was founded by Columbia Records, and competing services offered competing selections, though Columbia House was always the frontrunner in terms of marketing exposure, in my young eyes. Eventually all the pieces came together and I pulled the trigger. I couldn't tell you exactly what I ordered, but I'm pretty sure Madonna's Like a Virgin and a Huey Lewis album were involved. What can I say; it was the '80s.
And that first shipment of cassette tapes was like Christmas. I ripped open the rigid cardboard packaging, and was instantly a music connoisseur with a burgeoning collection that I could slip in and out of my Walkman as I desired. Columbia House didn't just give me enjoyment; it gave me freedom. Empowerment. Agency. (Please disregard that my parents were paying for the whole thing.) This was America at its finest.
But that high of consumerism was fleeting, and soon I found myself with music homework. As it turns out, finding subsequent albums to buy was as difficult as choosing the initial batch. It just became easier to let the pre-selected albums come in — imagine U2's Songs of Innocence, but it's a cassette tape that shows up at your house and you have to pay for it. When that initial obligation was up, things didn't get any easier. Canceling Columbia House was notoriously difficult, and finally getting rid of the service was my first young lesson in the dangers of using your parents' credit card. (It was later bested by the $500 I spent calling a Total Recall 1-900 number in the hopes of winning a leather jacket, but one step at a time.)
Columbia House, my nostalgic heart will miss you. You taught me how much fun it was to buy music, and you taught me to avoid mail-order offers at all costs. In a way, you were the good and the bad of capitalism, all wrapped up in one shiny TV Guide ad. May the sounds of Huey Lewis and The News usher you gently into that good night.
Columbia House, the Spotify of the '80s, is dead
"
Columbia House, the Spotify of the '80s, is dead
By Bryan Bishop on August 10, 2015 05:13 pm
There was a time in the not-too-distant past where you couldn't just open Spotify, your favorite torrent client, or iTunes and get hold of a song you wanted to hear. No, you had to obtain actual physical goods that they sold in things called stores. That is, of course, unless you were a member of the Columbia House music club.
Columbia House offered you Incredible Deals™ when you signed up: you'd get a bunch of free albums for a penny, and in turn you promised to buy a set number of albums over the coming year. (To make things easy for you, Columbia House would automatically send you some albums unless you told them not to.) Mail-order convenience was big back then, and the idea of a subscription music service that came to your door was pretty appealing. But times change and mediums mutate, and now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Columbia House has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was an ugly ending. Revenues for Columbia House peaked in 1996 at $1.4 billion, but last year the company declared net revenue of just $17 million. Hell, it hadn't even been in the music business since 2010.
But I'm not here to cry for Columbia House. I'm here to remember.
I'm not sure where I first heard of the service, but I do know what finally pulled me in was an ad in TV Guide. It was a fancy, fold-out ad, probably with "1 cent" in big red letters. That penny was the only thing you'd need to pay to get the first collection of eight records (10 if you took advantage of the bonus albums!), and my pre-teenaged self couldn't get over the incredible bargain. I'd pore over the rest of the ad — literally just a list of artists and album names — like I was Ralphie in A Christmas Story, entranced by the potential and wonder.
I'd perused them before, but the problem was I could never really find enough albums I wanted to fill that initial order. That was the trick with Columbia House; due to the agreements in play, they actually didn't have records from everybody in the world. Columbia House was founded by Columbia Records, and competing services offered competing selections, though Columbia House was always the frontrunner in terms of marketing exposure, in my young eyes. Eventually all the pieces came together and I pulled the trigger. I couldn't tell you exactly what I ordered, but I'm pretty sure Madonna's Like a Virgin and a Huey Lewis album were involved. What can I say; it was the '80s.
And that first shipment of cassette tapes was like Christmas. I ripped open the rigid cardboard packaging, and was instantly a music connoisseur with a burgeoning collection that I could slip in and out of my Walkman as I desired. Columbia House didn't just give me enjoyment; it gave me freedom. Empowerment. Agency. (Please disregard that my parents were paying for the whole thing.) This was America at its finest.
But that high of consumerism was fleeting, and soon I found myself with music homework. As it turns out, finding subsequent albums to buy was as difficult as choosing the initial batch. It just became easier to let the pre-selected albums come in — imagine U2's Songs of Innocence, but it's a cassette tape that shows up at your house and you have to pay for it. When that initial obligation was up, things didn't get any easier. Canceling Columbia House was notoriously difficult, and finally getting rid of the service was my first young lesson in the dangers of using your parents' credit card. (It was later bested by the $500 I spent calling a Total Recall 1-900 number in the hopes of winning a leather jacket, but one step at a time.)
Columbia House, my nostalgic heart will miss you. You taught me how much fun it was to buy music, and you taught me to avoid mail-order offers at all costs. In a way, you were the good and the bad of capitalism, all wrapped up in one shiny TV Guide ad. May the sounds of Huey Lewis and The News usher you gently into that good night.
Columbia House, the Spotify of the '80s, is dead
"
I did this in high school, got 6 CDs: Hall & Oates, the Doobie Brothers
, Carole King, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, the Stylistics, and one other I forget (maybe Bob Marley),This was like 2001, but I always appreciated the classics CDs came I was like "
it worked."
Few weeks later they sent me a bill
Called them up like
"I'm a child, I didn't know what I was getting into
" It took a few months but they eventually left me alone.
, Carole King, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, the Stylistics, and one other I forget (maybe Bob Marley),This was like 2001, but I always appreciated the classics CDs came I was like "it worked."Few weeks later they sent me a bill
Called them up like
"I'm a child, I didn't know what I was getting into" It took a few months but they eventually left me alone.
Bilz
Superstar
Columbia House and BMG showed just how big the markup on music is. Even with all of the kids jacking music left and right, they still made money off the few suckers who actually paid for the CD of the month that would come in the mail if you didn't send back your letter refusing it. At my school we would take screwdrivers and hammers and crack up the case and stuff before marking it "refused" and sending it back.
Ricky Church
Stole Timberlake's Spaceship-Coupe
I remember the little catalogs they would randomly send to people's house and you could actually mark off the albums you wanted then send it back with the attached mailer.
My pops bought a few albums off there in the early 90's... I never understood how all that stuff worked so cheaply.
My pops bought a few albums off there in the early 90's... I never understood how all that stuff worked so cheaply.
Every Sunday we'd get one on the back of the Parade Magazine