They tried to charge me when I was 17, but I told them, when was the order placed they said 2001. So I said I would have been 10 years old at the time so therefore I wouldn't have been legally able to enter a contract therefore not required to pay. The deleted the account and I was no longer liable. Sucks the CDS were stolen from me.
I lived in an apartment building back then. Whenever neighbors in other apartments would move out or die, they'd suddenly receive new member shipments from Columbia and BMG. I wonder who ended up with all of those free CDs?? 🤓
Business Insider: thanks for sharing. What I loved most about Columbia House was a segment of the monthly booklet called "The Bargain Bin". I got The Ramones "Rocket To Russia" there on 8-track for 99 cents. Best 99 cents ever spent. Cheers!
Back in the 1970’s, Columbia House did put out a series of compilation albums called the “Columbia Musical Treasury” series. I remember the label, and it was cool, and it was part of Columbia House where it was a scam back then. The compilation albums from the “Columbia Musical Treasury” were available through mail order during the 1970’s, and it was not sold in stores. Those were flashbacks.
Back when i was a teen, These guys would literally send CDs to any residence you put on the little free postage cards. I remember pranking friends sending them CDs and they would get them, course the parents would get pissed haha. I remember also getting upwards of 100 or more free CDs under different aliases..using the same address or variations close to it. When time passed, i would pawn these CDs and get money from them. Thanks Columbia House!!
How much did YOU get for the pawned CDs? I tried to sell mine to a music store, but was only offered $3 for each CD. That was $2 less (because it was a club cd as mentioned on the barcode) than the normal amount you'd get for a scratch-free, CD fully intact with no damage to the book. Whatever, I decided to just keep them thinking the music would eventually grow on me. I still don't like Coheed & Cambria to this day 🤢
Back when I was a kid I used to send in my initial order&get my 12 CDs&my first catalog,the catalogs always had a sign up sheet that you passed along to a friend&for your effort of signing up a buddy you received 6 free CDs,i would sign up every address that was on my street that somebody had just moved out of or the recently decreased&I would get their 12 CDs plus my 6 free CDs for signing them up,I wound up with a 1000 CDs or so doing this,now did I feel guilty?...hell no!...Columbia was screwing over people as part of their business tactic so the way I looked at it they got what they deserved,of course I would get the letters from their collection agency for not buying my full price album or I would forget to send in the card letting them know I didn't want the selection of the month,they would even go so far as to call me&threaten to ruin my credit etc,I told I was 10 years old,didn't have credit to begin with,so Sue me...lol
Millions of kids under 18 signed up for these "free" CDs. You can't bind a mail order contract on minors. It's not legal binding, and no matter how many bills you send they're not going to pay.
@@Untouchablejoe I did too, multiple times. Kept the CDs and never paid for them. And that’s my point. Columbia House “12 CDs for a Penny” was a flawed business model. If you keep the CDs and never pay for them, what are they going to do? Send a minor’s name to a collection agency?
I know I did back in the day. Back then you didn’t have debit cards and you didn’t need credit info. All you had to do was write a fake name on the brochure and send it in 🤣
I used to do.this after I showed my social studies teacher the order form since it asks your age, you can't be held to the contract. Id get 12 CDs a week, sell them for 5$ apiece
I never noticed inferior booklets on BMG/Columbia House pressings. The key was that they didn't have to pay artist royalties and the negative billing component. Shipping was cheap and media mail could be used for all of it.
Columbia House was the music piracy back in the day. Sending those "1 cent" CDs was almost equivalent to downloading the music from Napster, Scour, KaZaa, Limewire, et al in terms of how many royalties the artists got from those. Even the normal priced ones from Columbia House, BMG, and others were discounted in terms of what they paid the artists.
I remembered when Columbia House (along with CDHQ) used to serve Canada with its similar marketing there. That was before the advent of streaming services Like Spotify, Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+ - just to name a few.
They were manufactured cheaply in their own plants and were slightly different from the "real thing" sold at record shops, but most people didn't notice.
You forgot that the bill for shipping these "free" cd's was 155$. That was in 1997, I wrote them back telling them I was a child and wasn't going to pay. Never heard anything from them. Thanks for the No Doubt CD.
I didn't have a problem with the way Columbia House operated. I built up my CD collection through them and got albums not easily found in stores. Always returned the NO card and understood after the 12 free CDs I was going to have to pay full price plus shipping and handling on future purchases
Know i was wrong but I was in the 6th grade. I'd just get the ten for a penny and quit. I was 12 and 13 what are they going to do garnish my wages lol.
The Americans have NEVER respected their artists. The creators of artwork in that country don't even have a minimum wage, much less a living wage. The Americans love to take advantage of the increase in quality of life that artists provide, but they don't believe their artists deserve to sleep indoors or have adequate access to nutrition.
@@DNOJ Literally everyone during the time periods discussed in this video. Or do you seriously think Pandora and Spotify were a thing in the 80s and 90s?
It was quite the scam. The Columbia ads were ubiquitous in all the major magazines. As the professor noted, the records had poor pressings with no liner notes. Columbia made a fortune just off the shipping and handling.
Dang Imagine being a small time artist and Columbia house GIVES your music away pays you nothing and now you lost a customer because why would they go to the record store and buy it again? Then they profit off you because the person is now signed on to buy albums for a higher price and then columbia pockets the dough off your album that you got nothing from....
Just trashed a bunch i had for over 25 years. no point in them, havent had a cd player in decades. almost all said "mfd. for bmg direct" on the back. .
Am I just high or are ppl actually supporting this scam/horrible business in the comments? The CD's weren't even real...They were burned. The artists did not get paid. Awful.
why my music business went extinct, after I got robbed of my supplies, fools went over my head to steal from my boss BMG... pure theft of services.... And these fools are literally bragging
It's when you auger a hole into the phone you can mash your weiner into. It was fairly common practice on the older brick phones. A way of screwing the phone companies back, specifically Sprint & AT&T at the times. Supposedly Steve Jobs was so put off by this activity, he directed his team to immediately design a flatphone to prevent this. That was the driving force behind Apple's campaign to thin the smartphone each design evolution during the early years of the iPhone.
What happened is that they were sold off, changed owners a couple times, downsized, and changed business models. BMG Bought out Columbia House in 2005. It was later sold to Najafi Companies (later called direct brands). In 2009, Columbia House shut down music operations and became a video only club. In 2010, the Canadian division of Columbia House went bankrupt. In 2015, the US division was acquired by John Lippman. The latest company to run it is called Edge Line Ventures.
Your revolution is over. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me? (0)
I ran the free cd scam for years. Thank you Susan Klein, Jessie Meisner, Frank Beiulachek, Tony Gespetti, Linda Thomspon
😂😂😂😂😂
I did it once, now Tyler Durden is an alias on my credit as an alias.
Thanks to them, I had a great music catalog of CDs. This brings back memories!
They tried to charge me when I was 17, but I told them, when was the order placed they said 2001. So I said I would have been 10 years old at the time so therefore I wouldn't have been legally able to enter a contract therefore not required to pay. The deleted the account and I was no longer liable. Sucks the CDS were stolen from me.
@@Gabriel.4190 It's called "Karma". You, in fact, stole the CD's yourself and you knew it.
I can remember my first shipment, it was like 25 cds... It was a great day.
Para compral CD de musica
En Columbia house
In the 80’s I had a great cassette collection. In the 90’s I had a great CD collection. Thanks to them
I loved BMG and Columbia House as a kid in the 90s.
The eighties, for me with LPs
Those were the days lol
Built my cd collection
I still haven't got around to paying them.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
🤣🤣🤣
Lol
Who else got punished by their parents for falling for the scam?
I wish this was still around :(
I lived in an apartment building back then. Whenever neighbors in other apartments would move out or die, they'd suddenly receive new member shipments from Columbia and BMG. I wonder who ended up with all of those free CDs?? 🤓
Same Here
I did the same thing! We would find vacant apartments or houses and use those addresses with fake names.
I got a really nice set of steak knives to the couple that used to live in my rented townhouse 8 years gone. I still have them today! lol
@@ccjohncc1😂😂😂
Who else remembers hitting that bill me later box? LMAO man felt like i caught a huge lick when those cds came!
I’m only one of millions who still owe them money.
Business Insider: thanks for sharing. What I loved most about Columbia House was a segment of the monthly booklet called "The Bargain Bin". I got The Ramones "Rocket To Russia" there on 8-track for 99 cents. Best 99 cents ever spent. Cheers!
They couldn't make anyone pay. They sent me free cds at the age of like 12. How you gonna get loot from teens?
I want to thank BMG and Columbia House for generously donating 19 albums to my collection.
It's the MoviePass of the 90s!!
This is how I built my music taste in the late 90's. Third Eye Blind, Vertical Horizon, Incubus, etc. All came from penny ad.
I think that’s how I got my 3rd eye blind CD
@@markocroatia1 same bro i was so into my alternative phase too! the day i received Nirvana Greenday Korn MAN was so great
Back in the 1970’s, Columbia House did put out a series of compilation albums called the “Columbia Musical Treasury” series. I remember the label, and it was cool, and it was part of Columbia House where it was a scam back then. The compilation albums from the “Columbia Musical Treasury” were available through mail order during the 1970’s, and it was not sold in stores. Those were flashbacks.
The 90s. Love it.
The 1970’s when Columbia House was known for compilation LP boxed sets under the “Columbia Musical Treasury” line.
Back when i was a teen, These guys would literally send CDs to any residence you put on the little free postage cards. I remember pranking friends sending them CDs and they would get them, course the parents would get pissed haha. I remember also getting upwards of 100 or more free CDs under different aliases..using the same address or variations close to it. When time passed, i would pawn these CDs and get money from them. Thanks Columbia House!!
How much did YOU get for the pawned CDs?
I tried to sell mine to a music store, but was only offered $3 for each CD. That was $2 less (because it was a club cd as mentioned on the barcode) than the normal amount you'd get for a scratch-free, CD fully intact with no damage to the book.
Whatever, I decided to just keep them thinking the music would eventually grow on me. I still don't like Coheed & Cambria to this day 🤢
Me too. I'd get 5 per CD and had more weed than anyone in school
I signed up under both of them under different names. So I had four accounts and I racked up stacks of CD’s
Thank you Columbia House for my Eagle Eye Cherry, Matchbox 20, Daft Punk and No Doubt CDs
Belonged to it for years
Back when I was a kid I used to send in my initial order&get my 12 CDs&my first catalog,the catalogs always had a sign up sheet that you passed along to a friend&for your effort of signing up a buddy you received 6 free CDs,i would sign up every address that was on my street that somebody had just moved out of or the recently decreased&I would get their 12 CDs plus my 6 free CDs for signing them up,I wound up with a 1000 CDs or so doing this,now did I feel guilty?...hell no!...Columbia was screwing over people as part of their business tactic so the way I looked at it they got what they deserved,of course I would get the letters from their collection agency for not buying my full price album or I would forget to send in the card letting them know I didn't want the selection of the month,they would even go so far as to call me&threaten to ruin my credit etc,I told I was 10 years old,didn't have credit to begin with,so Sue me...lol
Millions of kids under 18 signed up for these "free" CDs. You can't bind a mail order contract on minors. It's not legal binding, and no matter how many bills you send they're not going to pay.
Where were you 19 years ago when my mother would beat me with a belt for receiving free CDs under the alias of a "Ben Dover" or "Janice Frenz"?
Aint no age limit
I was one of those kids!
@@Untouchablejoe I did too, multiple times. Kept the CDs and never paid for them. And that’s my point. Columbia House “12 CDs for a Penny” was a flawed business model. If you keep the CDs and never pay for them, what are they going to do? Send a minor’s name to a collection agency?
I know I did back in the day. Back then you didn’t have debit cards and you didn’t need credit info. All you had to do was write a fake name on the brochure and send it in 🤣
I used to do.this after I showed my social studies teacher the order form since it asks your age, you can't be held to the contract. Id get 12 CDs a week, sell them for 5$ apiece
I never noticed inferior booklets on BMG/Columbia House pressings. The key was that they didn't have to pay artist royalties and the negative billing component. Shipping was cheap and media mail could be used for all of it.
Columbia House was the music piracy back in the day. Sending those "1 cent" CDs was almost equivalent to downloading the music from Napster, Scour, KaZaa, Limewire, et al in terms of how many royalties the artists got from those. Even the normal priced ones from Columbia House, BMG, and others were discounted in terms of what they paid the artists.
They didn't pay the artists & the inserts were not proper. It was a scam. Everyone was scamming ! 😂
I still owe them money
I remembered when Columbia House (along with CDHQ) used to serve Canada with its similar marketing there.
That was before the advent of streaming services Like Spotify, Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+ - just to name a few.
They were manufactured cheaply in their own plants and were slightly different from the "real thing" sold at record shops, but most people didn't notice.
What annoys me is that Spotify has 30 million songs, but Amazon and Deezer has 40 million! That's 25% more music for the same price!
It's called so redundant to remake playlists of your 100s of songs when switching services.
TF is deezer
brady50429 Tf is google?
You forgot that the bill for shipping these "free" cd's was 155$. That was in 1997, I wrote them back telling them I was a child and wasn't going to pay. Never heard anything from them. Thanks for the No Doubt CD.
"Thanks for the No Doubt CD." 🤣😂😄🤣😂
Why did you write to tell them that, though?
The free ones never cost me that much...
@@customfantasyhotwheels So they wouldn't keep sending bills.
by working a job, if enough people bought it they can make a lot.
I didn't have a problem with the way Columbia House operated. I built up my CD collection through them and got albums not easily found in stores.
Always returned the NO card and understood after the 12 free CDs I was going to have to pay full price plus shipping and handling on future purchases
That is why I deeply ponder on why most artists don't go to BandCamp....
Kronus Titanicus your comment needs editing. No need for reply, I'll delete this one after a while
Kronus Titanicus I think Soundcloud is the most popular indie platform that everyone knows cuz of the soundcloud rapper meme
Xavier Zara
Thank you
Traplover7
You can download FLAC files from Bandcamp. In addition, the artist gets 85% of the revenue. Though you buy per album, not per membership.
Artists make the bulk of their money on live performances and merchandising. Records have always been more promo.
I signed up every time I changed addresses. No way these groups made money
Same 😂
Man this was so good!! I loved it!!!
Columbia House later came back to the DVD movie business
Yep, I got a few free DVDs too 😂
@@MattnDarren19
Correct
I also received free DVD movies from Disney Movie Insiders (formerly Disney Movie Rewards)
This happened well before the 90's
Yep, well before cd’s. There’s a reason it was called the ‘record club’
Yep I remember cassette offers
Went on into the early 2000's and it was a CD club, I know because I was in it.
What happened to all the cds when they went under? Who got ownership?was a member to the end. I was interested in some titles, but i was too late.
I didn't pay a single penny to BMG or Columbia House.
Thank god for digital downloads!
The stuff they gave away was returns from the distributors...tax right off. The stuff you bought was profit for the label Win-Win
I was in elementary school in the CD club lol my family still joke about it to this day!
After the first shipment you had to buy several more at superinflated prices. Ripoff. Fingerhut was another one that had ridiculous prices
Pay a penny for 12 music cds sounds like a great deal
How do I get Columbia CDs
@@williebennett1781 Invent time travel.
CD's ???? In my day.....80's it was cassette tapes we ordered through Columbia!!
I never bought my required CD after the first set for 0.01 lol
Yep! They sent me a Steve Winwood cd. I got stuck with it
Having 10 different accounts!
The scam with this was ordering them to your neighbors house and then grabbing them from their mail box lol
I was a club member. I still owe them $20
Am I the only one who actually paid? LMAO
No...I paid a few times. They would offer like 3 more free CDs if you bought 1...
Isn't Disney Movie Club basically the same thing?
I think they made money off of debt collection companies who would buy debt from fake names who would never pay that bill like me.
cool video
Now artists are lucky if the fans actually buy and download 1 to 2 records on an EP/album.
85 percent of music revenue is derived from streaming services.
Know i was wrong but I was in the 6th grade. I'd just get the ten for a penny and quit. I was 12 and 13 what are they going to do garnish my wages lol.
I still owe these people from 1997
Got my first CDs through BMG, of course Napster was taking off at the time too so buying CDs went out the window.
The Americans have NEVER respected their artists. The creators of artwork in that country don't even have a minimum wage, much less a living wage. The Americans love to take advantage of the increase in quality of life that artists provide, but they don't believe their artists deserve to sleep indoors or have adequate access to nutrition.
Paying for music ?
How do you do that ?
Subscription in today's world
Othniel Jones
Subscription, or you buy albums through the internet.
Traplover7 I was being sarcastic... Ik how it's just. Who actually does that ?
Kronus Titanicus I was being sarcastic... Ik how it's just. Who actually does that ?
@@DNOJ Literally everyone during the time periods discussed in this video. Or do you seriously think Pandora and Spotify were a thing in the 80s and 90s?
It was quite the scam. The Columbia ads were ubiquitous in all the major magazines. As the professor noted, the records had poor pressings with no liner notes. Columbia made a fortune just off the shipping and handling.
"Return To Sender"
The Original Napster......
How in the hell did Columbia House make any money? NOBODY paid for those tapes and discs. Hell, I think I still owe them some money.
I did this in middle school. I never paid them 😂
I had a membership. The sound quality of the CDs were atrocious.
Dang Imagine being a small time artist and Columbia house GIVES your music away pays you nothing and now you lost a customer because why would they go to the record store and buy it again? Then they profit off you because the person is now signed on to buy albums for a higher price and then columbia pockets the dough off your album that you got nothing from....
Wow I remembered this foolishry**
I still owe them money :)
Just trashed a bunch i had for over 25 years. no point in them, havent had a cd player in decades. almost all said "mfd. for bmg direct" on the back. .
Oh I Rember That I Received A Shit Load Of Disc From Them
Am I just high or are ppl actually supporting this scam/horrible business in the comments? The CD's weren't even real...They were burned. The artists did not get paid. Awful.
Let me just say I exercised the hell out of this.
Pretty sure my sister did that using my name when I was like 6 years old.
Return to sender
Happened with all 3 of my brothers.
why my music business went extinct, after I got robbed of my supplies, fools went over my head to steal from my boss BMG... pure theft of services.... And these fools are literally bragging
I dont know how they made $ no one paid beyond the penny lol ! I got so many free cd's and records it was nuts lol !!
......Smart phone penitration?
nisi bonum ohhhh it's real !!
Othniel Jones in sure it is. But what is it
It's when you auger a hole into the phone you can mash your weiner into. It was fairly common practice on the older brick phones. A way of screwing the phone companies back, specifically Sprint & AT&T at the times. Supposedly Steve Jobs was so put off by this activity, he directed his team to immediately design a flatphone to prevent this. That was the driving force behind Apple's campaign to thin the smartphone each design evolution
during the early years of the iPhone.
Nobody is going to talk about the poor quality sound of the CDs or tapes?
Same as the Girls Gone Wild videos. Better cancel n send that back before your roommates open it up cause your getting charged $24.95 if you don’t
YOU'RE*
you + are = you're
I wonder how much of a loss they took four people not paying I'll tell you what it's a good end of the year right off
I knew a guy in school who joined the club. They sent a collection agency after him.
Giving away 8 CDs for a penny is like going to a job every day
Wat ever happened to this company I remember ordered some stuff from them
What happened is that they were sold off, changed owners a couple times, downsized, and changed business models. BMG Bought out Columbia House in 2005. It was later sold to Najafi Companies (later called direct brands). In 2009, Columbia House shut down music operations and became a video only club. In 2010, the Canadian division of Columbia House went bankrupt. In 2015, the US division was acquired by John Lippman. The latest company to run it is called Edge Line Ventures.
I used one called Ritmo y Pasión. What a fraud!!!
So they were pirating the originals ?
Legalized bootleg music. Every teenager in the 80's was a "member" 🤣
Good luck trying to enforce a contract on a minor.
Scam
Con artist. Im glad i never got that crap.
Falo It was actually a GREAT deal for the consumer. Just sucked for the Artist. $20 basically for 12 cds? That’s a freaking steal.
Your revolution is over. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me?
(0)