Looking back at my musical memories and penny deals with Columbia House

By John Toth

The Bulletin

I was watching the “Today Show” on NBC when they ran a story about Columbia House shutting down. Yes, that Columbia House - the one that used to send me tapes and CDs for only a penny.

I became a member when I was a teenager. I got my first order of records for a penny. Then I changed to cassettes and eventually to CDs. I mailed in my selections every month.

I still have most of the records and all the cassettes I bought from Columbia House. Sometimes they weren’t all that great, but I kept them all. I ventured into jazz and classical music, but most of the time, I stayed within the pop and rock ‘n’ roll categories.

It allowed me to test out different genres. I already liked classical because I grew up on it in Hungary, Austria and then in the USA. I listened to it a lot. It relaxed me.

Real-complicated jazz took some getting used to. I had trouble following it, and most of the time I couldn’t really figure it out. Columbia House allowed me to become more exposed to these genres while also supplying me with a steady flow of pop and rock.

The news that Columbia House is going out of business did not surprise me. I didn’t even know that the company was still in business. I have not seen those flashy magazine ads in decades.

Columbia House lasted 71 years, which by itself is remarkable, since they basically gave away the first eight to 12 records or cassettes to get you trapped in their musical web. I was, and I didn’t really mind.

I still remember getting that first big box of records or tapes and listening to them right away. They weren’t all top-notch, but they only cost a penny, and I didn’t mind. I listened to all of them and actually found some talented artists whose work I would not have bought otherwise.

I bought at least one cassette or record each month, and often more. I liked the convenience that it showed up in the mail. After the introductory offer, the music got more expensive, but not more than what I would have paid in a record store.

I still have record and cassette players, and for nostalgia’s sake, still listen to music the old- fashioned way.

When I first tried to explain to my kids how music was created inside a cassette player with magnetic signals, or a record player with vibrations picked up by a stylus, they looked at me like I was crazy.

Why go through all that trouble when you could just download the same music or stream it? I agree, and I now stream most of the music from my teenage years, except when I occasionally pull out the record or cassette player.

My foray into older formats hasn’t been limited to just cassettes and vinyl, either.

I still have an 8-track player in the closet, but it sounds horrible. I never ordered 8-track tapes from Columbia House. A friend of mine had an 8-track player in his car, and it kept eating his tapes. Once they got jammed, that was the end.

While my memories are focused on the music, the Columbia House itself was a massive operation.

At its peak in 1996, it generated roughly $1.4 billion in annual revenue with around 16-million members. As big-box stores, online retail, and file-sharing grew, sales plummeted, dropping to just $17 million by 2014.

The company ended its iconic music club in 2010 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015. Under later ownership, it survived only as a niche DVD and Blu-ray mail-order club, but declining membership and a shrinking physical catalog ultimately made continuing operations unsustainable.

So long, Columbia House. It was fun while it lasted. If it’s any consolation, the tapes and records I bought from you going back to the early 1970s still sound good - just not as good as the digital versions I can stream on demand.

(How many of you plucked down a penny to get 8-12 records or tapes from Columbia House, and how long were you a member? Send your experience to john.bulletin@gmail.com, and we’ll share it with our readers. Old school? Still have a fax machine? Our fax number is 1-866-844-5288. Older school? Our mailing address is The Bulletin, PO Box 2426, Angleton, TX., 77516.)