Record and tape clubs, video clubs...which did you use?

Rudy

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Since record clubs were brought up in other threads, I figured it might be fun to revisit the topic here in its own thread.

There have been a lot of clubs over the years, both for music and video. My record buying years coincided with the prime Columbia House era, and I never really knew of many others that had existed earlier. So anyone with insight into those older clubs could make this discussion really interesting!
 
My first was RCA Music Club 1971. I got cassettes of Bee Gees 2 Years On, Elton John Tumbleweed Connection, and Iron Butterfly Metamorphosis. I was a freshman in high school. 2 out of three were great. Lol
I used RCA again in the late 90’s to early 2000’s for box sets. They often had buy 1 get 1 free. Great deals. They faded away, just like chain music stores. I believe I used Columbia house for one cycle in the 80’s. I hated those post cards every 6 weeks. If you didn’t mail them back right away, they sent and billed you their pick of the month. Too much work to return them.
 
Music-wise, I never subscribed to Columbia House, although many times I used to glue the stickers onto the cards to pick my favorites from the bunch. Since my tastes were always outside the mainstream, it was sometimes tricky to find enough to fill the card for my free selections.

In the 90s, though, I did take advantage of the BMG Music Club and probably joined them a couple of times once my required purchases were completed. 😁 There was another music subscription service that spun off from them, but I can't remember the name of it now. (I remember getting some Elton John SACDs from them, and a few others, since the prices were so inexpensive.)

The record club I belonged to in the late 70s really wasn't like a traditional club. I believe it was called the Discount Music Club, and the "fees" were to cover the cost of the Schwann Catalog they would send out quarterly, using a custom-printed rear cover with all of the discount prices listed. You could order anything in the catalog and get the discount.

The club that amazed me the most was the Columbia House Laserdisc Club. Many of us on CompuServe's Consumer Electronics--Video forum signed up and our first three selections were of course the letterboxed Star Wars trilogy (the originals with the 20th Century Fox logo on top). After paying for a couple of the required LDs, though, we started getting catalogs that had some insane discounts and specials. I think I once got about six or seven titles for $50, which seemed like some sort of clearance sale. I never paid full price for a LD--even newer releases were discounted. It was a quick way to build up a collection.
 
I have about 60 LD titles myself. I haven’t turned my player on in over 15 years. It doesn’t have a HDMI output. It does play both sides without turning it over though. Lol
It’s a Panasonic. I have a mix of music and movies, including a couple of Carpenters titles. Live In Japan was one of my first purchases. Only 2 of the 3 Star Wars discs though. Fun topic Rudy.
 
I did Both Columbia house and RCA music Services ( later BMG) off and on from the mid 80s until the mid 2000s when Sony/BMG merged and Columbia house was absorbed in to the BMG club Columbia house had some Rare albums and Cds that Weren't available from BMG and vice versa and in some cases Not Even attainable in the Local stores so for me it served a few purposes but what made it Expensive was the Shipping and Handling charges in my opinions but I still have the recordings I bought from them over the years
 
I used to constantly peruse the stiff record club ads in the center of TV Guide in many week's magazines. It was always a challenge for me to come up with those 12 or 13 records for a penny. There wasn't all that much that I really wanted, even for that price. And I always thought that it was a "too good to be true" deal, especially when you read the terms and conditions. The idea of a chosen record of the month being automatically sent - and at essentially list price, plus shipping and handling, seemed a terrifying prospect to me.

So I never joined the Columbia or RCA or Capitol record clubs, but I did enjoy looking at the ads.

Sometime in the late 60s, I DID decide to join a sort-of "anti-Record Club" record club. It was called Record Club Of America. Their deal was that you could join up without any commitments - and without the initial perks. Basically, it was just a catalog outfit that sold records and tapes. I bought a few things from them and, as usual, enjoyed looking through the catalogs that came monthly. But I think I preferred going to a store, and holding my potential purchase in my had before buying, so I probably only bought maybe a dozen titles over the few years I was a member.

One purchase was this custom pressed test record. It was probably not terribly scientific, but it was fun to play around with. It had frequency tests and sweeps. Individual channel identification tests, and even a blank spot with no grooves to test anti-skating.

1602643308930.png1602643333253.png

Many years later, Columbia House sucked me in with episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE on VHS tape. These things were well-produced and looked great on the VCR's and CRT-TVs of the day. But boy were they expensive. One tape would house about two hours worth of TWILIGHT ZONE programs - and there were something like 156 shows over five years. The club got you hooked with the first couple being very cheap and then there was the inevitable one per month or six weeks at the "low, club price" of only $29.95 plus shipping and handling. I stayed in that club to the bitter end, and I'd do the math to figure out what I spent, but it gives me a headache thinking about it. Those tapes were ultimately given away when I just had to have DVDs - and then Blu-rays of these same shows.

And I really got annoyed with Columbia House. Somewhere around the year 2000, I got wind that Columbia House had a different series available, one of my all-time sentimental favorites that I couldn't get anywhere else - THE TIME TUNNEL. This was a one-season sci-fi series from Irwin Allen that ran from 1966-1967, and I was never able to get it on tape in any way as no TV stations ran it in all my years. It had a cable run in the early 90s but I didn't get that channel, So when I found out the Columbia House had it, I was thrilled - except it was never listed in any ads or catalogs from them.

I called their customer support line and was told that it was not one of their offerings. I called again and again and each time was assured that Columbia House did NOT offer THE TIME TUNNEL. From eBay today:VHS Columbia House.jpg

There it is - at the bottom - the Columbia House logo. Lying sons-of-&!#$#(~S!!!!!...
 
I never joined any of the clubs. Since I was in the music biz, I had a hate-hate relationship with them. What really got me annoyed was, people who WERE in the clubs would bring in their unwanted records and want to trade me for something they did want. Of course I got very good at spotting the record club indicia on the packaging... sometimes it was pretty tiny but it was always there.

The closest thing to a club I ever joined was, in the 80s there was a magazine called Digital Audio, which later was renamed CD Review, run by a fella named Wayne Green. It came along at a time when CDs were hard to come by for many titles, so they would review new releases but also did a lot of writing about the reissues that were making big bucks for the labels at that time. Green loved to rail against the big, corporate music put out by the major labels; he was a champion of non-big-label music. He came up with a deal where he would send out a various-artist disc every few weeks with mostly jazzy instrumentals on it. Some of them were pretty good. I suppose the hope was that you'd hear something you liked and seek out the full length disk. I can't remember if there was a monthly fee for that or whether it was a pay as you go deal, or maybe it came with the magazine. I still have a few of the CDs. Wayne Green died some time ago and the magazine has been defunct for quite a while.
 
I really miss that magazine--I blame them for dozens of CD purchases over the years they were active. 😁 Some of the reviews were of titles that other magazines never reviewed, and I liked that they covered reissues also. They might have been the label that introduced me to the dmp Records catalog--in fact, that's probably where I heard of the 3-inch A Touch of dmp CD sampler I ordered in 1987.

I'll also admit that Stereo Review, which had been around for decades at that point, had influenced more than a few purchases--they had a great staff of reviewers also. Some of them, like Phyl Garland and the legendary jazz reviewer Chris Albertson, I trusted implicitly and was never let down by anything they had recommended.

I vaguely remember Digital Audio had some sort of CD offer but I never took them up on it. I had enough "gateway drug" CDs they'd recommended that I probably didn't need more to tempt me. 😁

I'm trying to remember at which point I learned that the club product was not as good as the genuine item. I may have read about it in one of the magazines I subscribed to at the time (Stereo Review, Audio). But that informed my buying decisions from that point on. I only ever joined BMG's CD club. The Discount Music Club was probably run by a rack jobber or distributor, since it was all genuine retail product sold at a discount (I want to say 20%).

I'm interesting in finding out what other clubs were around in the 60s and 70s. While shopping for used records, I remember running into a few where the label colors looked slightly off, then noticed that they were actually catalog number series nearly identical to what Capitol used. Not too much later, I learned Capitol had a record club.

The sound is a bit off on record club product. I remember finding a sealed T.J.B. Coney Island and it had this really strange sound to it--that's when I noticed the tiny "CRC" imprinted on the rear of the jacket. Others I found of 60s albums were a bit dulled over their genuine counterparts--it's no secret that the original labels were not going to send their best master tapes to the clubs. The digital age corrected that anomaly, although some publications like Stereophile insisted club CDs had more digital jitter than retail.

To Columbia House's credit, they were responsible for prolonging formats like reel tapes and 8-tracks, where there was a small but fervent demand for those formats.
 
Since record clubs were brought up in other threads, I figured it might be fun to revisit the topic here in its own thread.

There have been a lot of clubs over the years, both for music and video. My record buying years coincided with the prime Columbia House era, and I never really knew of many others that had existed earlier. So anyone with insight into those older clubs could make this discussion really interesting!
My first was Record Club of America. The records were always discounted from the start. Most were manufactured by RCOA and others were not, those that were, always were discounted better than those that were not. I bought a lot until they went bankrupt.
My second was Columbia House. I got a lot of albums at full price for the obligation but they would have a lot of good sale prices as well.
Once the obligation was over, I'd get a free selection with any regular purchase and I always got the multi album sets as free items.
The third and last was RCA which became BMG. The terms were basically the same as CH but the deals were much better. They would have the Buy One Get Three or Four Free, depending on the sale. I bought a number of CD box sets this way. I stayed them until they went totally online and eventually ended.
One thing with CH and RCA, if I got something I did not order or it came in for the wrong price, they always exchanged it or made the correction.
With RCOA, you paid up front with your order.
 
I used to constantly peruse the stiff record club ads in the center of TV Guide in many week's magazines. It was always a challenge for me to come up with those 12 or 13 records for a penny. There wasn't all that much that I really wanted, even for that price. And I always thought that it was a "too good to be true" deal, especially when you read the terms and conditions. The idea of a chosen record of the month being automatically sent - and at essentially list price, plus shipping and handling, seemed a terrifying prospect to me.

So I never joined the Columbia or RCA or Capitol record clubs, but I did enjoy looking at the ads.

Sometime in the late 60s, I DID decide to join a sort-of "anti-Record Club" record club. It was called Record Club Of America. Their deal was that you could join up without any commitments - and without the initial perks. Basically, it was just a catalog outfit that sold records and tapes. I bought a few things from them and, as usual, enjoyed looking through the catalogs that came monthly. But I think I preferred going to a store, and holding my potential purchase in my had before buying, so I probably only bought maybe a dozen titles over the few years I was a member.

One purchase was this custom pressed test record. It was probably not terribly scientific, but it was fun to play around with. It had frequency tests and sweeps. Individual channel identification tests, and even a blank spot with no grooves to test anti-skating.

1602643308930.png1602643333253.png

Many years later, Columbia House sucked me in with episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE on VHS tape. These things were well-produced and looked great on the VCR's and CRT-TVs of the day. But boy were they expensive. One tape would house about two hours worth of TWILIGHT ZONE programs - and there were something like 156 shows over five years. The club got you hooked with the first couple being very cheap and then there was the inevitable one per month or six weeks at the "low, club price" of only $29.95 plus shipping and handling. I stayed in that club to the bitter end, and I'd do the math to figure out what I spent, but it gives me a headache thinking about it. Those tapes were ultimately given away when I just had to have DVDs - and then Blu-rays of these same shows.

And I really got annoyed with Columbia House. Somewhere around the year 2000, I got wind that Columbia House had a different series available, one of my all-time sentimental favorites that I couldn't get anywhere else - THE TIME TUNNEL. This was a one-season sci-fi series from Irwin Allen that ran from 1966-1967, and I was never able to get it on tape in any way as no TV stations ran it in all my years. It had a cable run in the early 90s but I didn't get that channel, So when I found out the Columbia House had it, I was thrilled - except it was never listed in any ads or catalogs from them.

I called their customer support line and was told that it was not one of their offerings. I called again and again and each time was assured that Columbia House did NOT offer THE TIME TUNNEL. From eBay today:VHS Columbia House.jpg

There it is - at the bottom - the Columbia House logo. Lying sons-of-&!#$#(~S!!!!!...
Too cool, Harry!
 
The idea of a chosen record of the month being automatically sent - and at essentially list price, plus shipping and handling, seemed a terrifying prospect to me.

One of the clubs had a deal where you got a free portable phonograph for joining, rather than the dozen free records. My brother in law grabbed that offer and then never bought any records. When they started sending him bills, he just wrote "deceased" on them and sent them back. As far as I know, he never paid a penny. (He's always been kind of a shyster.)
 
When in college (c. '69-'72) I signed up as an 'agent' for Record Club of America, posting ads at school with the incentive being free records, dependent upon amount of sales. One of the freebies was Cream's Wheels of Fire double LP; however, the copy I received did not have the 'chromed' finish and was dull silver/grey so I ended up buying another copy anyhow. I still had credits for more LPs when they faded away, and all that RCOA stuff in still down in the basement somewhere (along with all my LPs) - just in case they get back in business.....
 
I had looked at Capitol Record Club and there was also one called Citadel Record Club. The three major label clubs did not carry each other's catalog but RCOA and Citadel carried all of the labels at the time. I did not join Capitol or Citadel. Citadel seemed to vanish quickly. I got enough through the others. Eventually RCA became BMG and carried all labels. In time they became YourMusic and went to entire online ordering only. That is now also gone.
 
Ah yes, that was it--YourMusic. It was a different kind of subscription service. I remember maybe a dozen years ago, they were known to have some of the SACD releases (like all of the SACD titles by Elton John) available at a really good price, and many of us ordered titles we knew were SACD from them to save a bit of money.

There are a couple of vinyl clubs now, but I can't say their selections are all that inspiring. Nothing I'd ever own, in other words. A couple of the audiophile labels used to have a subscription series, but those have fallen by the wayside also.
 
One thing as a member benefit was that if you got others to join, you got several free albums.
In my early days with RCOA and RCA, I got a number of people to join and got a slew of free albums.
I did explain the contracts but I never heard any complaints from anyone that I got to join.
 
When I was in my early 20s, I joined the Columbia Record Club many many MANY times. Let's just say that I took advantage of the loopholes in how the club was set up. I'm surprised I didn't put them out of business.
 
When I was in my early 20s, I joined the Columbia Record Club many many MANY times. Let's just say that I took advantage of the loopholes in how the club was set up. I'm surprised I didn't put them out of business.
I don't know how the recordings were licensed--the discs and packaging were dirt cheap to produce, and I vaguely seem to remember reading that no royalties were paid on club releases (but I would like to know for sure--if anyone does, please hop in here). I'm sure the unit cost of manufacturing a CD was under $2, if not $1, back in the heyday. At the scale Columbia's pressing operations functioned, their sheer volume could reduce costs to where they still made money with the giveaway recordings and the few that were required purchases.
 
I have never seen anything about no royalties being paid.
Record Club of America albums were always marked as "Manufactured under License issued by whatever the label was to RCOA." These were always sent without the plastic covering. Numerous labels did not allow RCOA to manufacture so these labels had higher pricing and came with the plastic wrapping.
The labels that did not allow RCOA to manufacture included Columbia and its associated labels, RCA, Warner/Reprise, Elektra/Asylum, A&M/Ode. Nearly every other label allowed manufacture by RCOA.
 
I did find a reference here:


Columbia House and BMG had some fairly clever ways to save cash, though. Until 2006, the record companies had never actually secured written licenses to distribute the records they sent to club members. Instead, the clubs saved the hassle (and the expense) by paying most publishers 75% of the standard royalties set by copyright law. The clubs argued that since the publishers were cashing their discounted checks, they were submitting to “implied” licenses.
Music publishers didn’t love this arrangement, but for decades it was pretty tough to fight back against the mail-order clubs. As some of the biggest pre-Internet retailers, the clubs held enormous power over the music market. According to a 2006 Billboard article, if a publisher complained, the clubs would simply stop carrying their records.
On top of that, the clubs generally weren’t buying their records from labels and then selling them. Instead, the clubs would acquire the master tapes of records and press their own copies on the cheap. Moreover, remember those “bonus” or “free” records you got for signing up for the clubs? The clubs generally didn’t pay any royalties at all on those, which further slashed their costs.
In the end, all these little factors saved a ton of money. In his 2004 book The Recording Industry, Geoffrey P. Hull took a look at the economics of the clubs. He estimated that the cost to the clubs of a “free” disc was only around $1.50, while a disc sold at full price cost the club anywhere from $3.20 to $5.50. Hull did the math and realized that even if only one of every three discs a club distributed sold at the $16 list price, the club would still end up making a margin of around $7.20 on each sold disc. Hull explains that retail stores were hard pressed to make a margin of even $6.50 per sold disc, so it’s easy to see how the clubs stayed afloat even with their massive marketing and advertising costs.


An interview here kind of confirms that:


The records that you would get for a penny counted as free goods and that there were no royalties on free goods. It's still unclear today exactly how many of those royalties were paid through to recording artists. They were only paid on the purchased goods, and even so it was at three-quarters of the regular rate that they would have been paid had you bought it in a regular record store.


This one contains some stats about two popular albums where royalties were small if nonexistent (you'll have to click through to the 4th page to read the second half of the quote below):


In many ways, though, the real victim of the clubs wasn't the consumer, but the recording artist. As record clubs' popularity mushroomed, the introductory incentive deals became more and more important to the success of the whole system. Since these incentive records were considered "giveaways" by both the clubs and the labels, artists were not paid royalties on them. Additionally, artists' royalties on even normal record-club purchases were typically far below the industry standard. The artists' financial losses became more noticeable in the CD era: for one, record clubs began to account for huge percentages of overall sales of certain blockbuster albums. On top of that, the cost of manufacturing a compact disc dropped to a fraction of what it had previously been to create vinyl.
It's important to understand that record clubs not only sold and distributed their records, they pressed them as well. What this meant to an artist during the 1990s CD boom was that while they were losing royalties hand over fist, the clubs were netting a fortune from low costs, high sales, and minuscule royalties.
For example, Cracked Rear View, Hootie & The Blowfish's 1994 debut smash, owed a whopping three million of its 13 million sales to record clubs — and yet the band received little to no royalties for any of them. Pearl Jam claimed to have lost royalties on a million "free" copies of its 1993 sophomore outing, Vs., and in 1995, Meat Loaf sued Sony over unpaid royalties from a million record-club sales of his 1977 classic, Bat Out Of Hell.
Of course, very few successful ventures can continue making money forever. The record clubs' ongoing battles with traditional music retail outlets (who, on average, paid $5-$6 wholesale more per CD than the clubs) eventually resulted in litigation that closed many of the licensing loopholes that had been so integral to the clubs' bread and butter. By that time, though, many labels had already jumped ship, leaving the clubs with fewer artists' catalogs to draw from.
So it's true that at least the giveaway CDs, being "no cost" items, generated no royalties for artists. And the remaining titles at full price were at a 75% rate. With those reduced rates, Columbia House made a ton of money and were a powerful and important retailer in the music industry back in the day.
 
Here is a bit of an oddball note. With Columbia House, the album soundtrack Funny Lady was listed as " Not now nor ever will be available as a free selection."
With BMG, it was available as a free selection. Other selections with BMG were listed as not available for a free selection and with Record Club of America, anything that they did not have license to manufacture was not available as free for new subscribers.
 
Interesting! I did notice a few differences between their catalogs back in the day, now that I think about it.
 
I too noticed those differences myself it was all quite interesting at the time what drew me to these clubs was the occasional selections that were not widely available anywhere else and the occasional Exclusive Recordings that appeared from time to time I still have several of those cases in addition to the others I bought over the years sometimes I felt like a one man radio station just having access to these clubs and the wide availability
 
I too noticed those differences myself it was all quite interesting at the time what drew me to these clubs was the occasional selections that were not widely available anywhere else and the occasional Exclusive Recordings that appeared from time to time I still have several of those cases in addition to the others I bought over the years sometimes I felt like a one man radio station just having access to these clubs and the wide availability
One of the Columbia House mailings was in an anniversary year. They have various covers from the privious 10 or 15 years. I saw one cover that piqued my interest. It was advertising a "Specially Priced 2 Record set " By Judy Collins. I have never seen a 2 lp set of hers except for "So Early In The Spring" and that was years later. I do not know if there was a two disc set back in 67-or 68 but it might have been two single albums for one special price.
 
When in college (c. '69-'72) I signed up as an 'agent' for Record Club of America, posting ads at school with the incentive being free records, dependent upon amount of sales. One of the freebies was Cream's Wheels of Fire double LP; however, the copy I received did not have the 'chromed' finish and was dull silver/grey so I ended up buying another copy anyhow. I still had credits for more LPs when they faded away, and all that RCOA stuff in still down in the basement somewhere (along with all my LPs) - just in case they get back in business.....
When "The Dionne Warwicke Story, A Decade of Gold" was released I saw it in a store. It had a rough textured cover that I thought was interesting. When I got my copy through Record Club of America, it had a smooth finish. I guess they saved money in that respect as well by not buying the textured type of cardboard use by Scepter Records.
 
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