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Utterly fascinating. How Columbia used the marketing prowess of the founders of the Book of the Month Club to promote its new LP format to a public that didn't know it needed it.
Also: The rise and fall of Terre Haute, Indiana -- the town that Columbia House built.
P.A.
Follow Ups:
Sony totally messed up when they failed to just start making ONLY SACD/Cd dual layr discs.
SACD would be mainstream now if they did.
As is, the lame SACD hobbles on with a small group of users.
Funny how the article diss's the seller, the customer, and everybody involved.
Sort of a glass half empty instead of half full attitude.
Same thing aboout artist royalties.. Well maybe those free records would NEVER have been purchsed anyway, same thing with a lot of free downloads. Folks download free 100,000 songgs. What for? nothing. and i mean that BOTH ways. Nothing in cost, and no reason, they would have never bothered if they had to pay, just a hooby to waste time.
I got tons of free DVDs. theysit on shelves. many i never watched. they re just junk. If i had to pay full price, i would just have fewer o nthe shelf.
Same with all the media I have bought used. 6,000 LPs, maybe a handfull new. Ditto CD and DVD.
(I have zero downlaods, free, paid for, none. I do have a pile of burned from owned CDs for the car.
I was a member of CH in the early 90's. Never had a single problem w/ those guys. Excellent service.
The CRC was formed after the LP had already displaced the 78, although it did encourage mass consumption of the former. But it did come along just as the stereo LP was happening, and cheap club stereo records (retail, they listed for $1 more than monos) tremendously boosted enthusiasm for two-channel reproduction.
P.A.
although I haven't bought one in a while. I did the CD club quite a bit and probably made money on it over the decade I was a member.
Chris
I would join the DVD club and order the minumum to clear the requirement in the same call.
Get my stuff in the mail and quit, the same call to quit i would rejoin, (they NEVER had a problem with that tactic) So I got plenty of good DVDs. I could use the catalog to get free 'good' DVDs, (unlike the crummy DVD stickers or whatever they sent out for new members..)
Early on the points for getting free stuff included super discounts on big box sets.. I got plenty of great box sets that way.. Only later on did they cut out the box sets from the free stuff.
So I definitely was a Columbia DVD Club "abuser".. LOL!
They never were happy doing that with CDs.
Though the regular RCA CD club was not to bad about joining and quitting and rejoining.
Separately I belonged to the RCA Classical, which was nice as they did not have the card return requirement in my membership. I belonged to that club through BMG and finally they quit doing the club altogether.
Amazing.
Maybe I'm too dumb to get it, but how did getting what I considered a deal on a bunch of albums, teach people to steal?
I didn't really notice a difference in vinyl quality at that time (mid/late 70's to early 80's), prolly because my equipment was more or less mid-fi, Technics SL1200 TT, Sansui SP3500 spkrs, & Sansui amp & tuner.
Most of all, I guess we were just ignorantly, blissfully happy with what we were hearing! That, and being high most of the time.
Dave
"I saw a lady on TV, she was born without arms. Thats sad, but then they said, Lola doesn't know the meaning of the word cant. What's even worse, not only is she missing arms, but she doesnt understand simple contractions. Mitch Hedberg
that it was yesteryear's equivalent of facsimile digital-music-file sharing, or unauthorized downloading.
After reading the article, and looking for a parallel, - it is a real challenge and stretch to equate the two. It was/is my understanding that the Columbia House remanufacturing and re-distribution process was endorsed by the labels: again, as a cheap facsimile of the legitimate product.
"In this land right now, some are insane and they're in charge. To hell with poverty, we'll get drunk on cheap wine."
Having not yet read the article I can tell you that a significant difference in mastering and pressing of the Columbia house releases is heard. Fleetwood Mac 'Rumors' was so far off that it was shocking. This did it for me and I also strive to stay away from 'greatest hits' or remasters as the original album is the best source in so many cases.
Edits: 11/11/11
"When men's promises cease to be good," Scherman wrote, "trade and production are hampered, credit collapses, people cannot buy, sellers cannot sell, chaos and social degeneration inevitably follow."
Of course that was before we knew about the curative properties of government funded bailouts.
Consumers for music they didn't order and didn't want, musicians for royalties never paid. I never fell for it. I know that Book-of-the-Month Club books were not the same physical quality as the bookstore editions, and are virtually worthless on the used market. Does anyone know if Columbia House vinyl was inferior to the standard issues?
as far as their physical qualities, and the case for them being worthless (to collectors) can't always be assumed." Finally, many booksellers assume that most BOMC editions are inferior in quality to their trade counterparts - this was and remains most definitely the case with the BOMC's primary competitor, the Literary Guild - but it's not often understood that BOMC editions were different animals in this respect. Even after the BOMC took over publishing themselves (July, 1930), with few exceptions they adhered to a policy of producing books that were equal in format and quality to the original publisher's books. In some cases, in fact, binder's boards were superior in quality. And talk about complexity - there were instances when trade publishers ran off their own editions simultaneously with BOMC's in the same plants! And here - how does one even begin to nail down edition state??? But even when trade and BOMC books were printed in different plants, great care was taken by the BOMC to duplicate trades. This is an important point to keep in mind because in part it explains why collectors find BOMC editions of collected authors desirable and, conversely, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, et al editions not. "
Edits: 11/12/11
I read in one of Lawrence Block's 'Burglar' books, approximately: Collector asks for a certain book. Bookseller says he has a book club edition. Collector: "What would I want with a book club edition?' Bookseller: "I suppose reading it is out of the question.' I wonder how many vinyl collectors buy them with the intention of never listening to them, in order to preserve the mint condition. Different set of attitudes from (some) book collectors. Again, thanks for the info.
and, IIRC, at that time it was simply "Columbia Record Club". I found them to be mostly identical to the regular issues. Perhaps something changed with the adition of "House"
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
I got a few of those record club pressings. They were often inferior to the regular ones. If I recall correctly, there was somewhere on the jacket or on the deadwax part of the record that said where the records were pressed. They were often from Mexico or Canada; not the typical domestic pressing.
.
"In this land right now, some are insane and they're in charge. To hell with poverty, we'll get drunk on cheap wine."
Hi Sordid,
As a college freshman in 1960 I joined the Columbia House Record Club for their intro offer. I don't remember any different markings on the jacket or label with those. It does seem like the records had a sealed plastic sleeve (rounded at one end like the record, square at the other end) rather than the usual paper sleeve but if so, I changed those long ago so now I can't tell.
I think the offer was choose to 10 or 12 records for $.01, then agree to buy 5 or 6 more at the regular price. I got out then so only received 15 to 18 in total. My player at the time was real crap but I never noticed any sonic issues years later as my systems improved. Not sure I could identify all of those today but I still have most of them.
I also have a few used Columbias purchased years later that are labeled Columbia Special Products. Could those be the ones you are referring to?
"For a nominal service fee,
you can reach nirvana tonight."
1. Different mastering, - the records sounded different....
2. They did not have the label's ID codes in fine print surrounding the sticker.
3. The stickers were often askew and misapplied and/or wrinkled.
4. The vinyl itself was actually thinner sometimes....
"In this land right now, some are insane and they're in charge. To hell with poverty, we'll get drunk on cheap wine."
None of the ones I bought had stickers on the jacket or record label.
"For a nominal service fee,
you can reach nirvana tonight."
is a sticker....
"In this land right now, some are insane and they're in charge. To hell with poverty, we'll get drunk on cheap wine."
...how were they made worse? Were they recorded from 8th generation copies or something? Crappy vinyl?
many 45s used recycled vinyl - paper labels and all!
rw
.
.
"In this land right now, some are insane and they're in charge. To hell with poverty, we'll get drunk on cheap wine."
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