Did you ever use Columbia House?

[corbe]

The Greatest Scam of Our Childhood 8 CDs for a Penny!

Skylabs Audio

705,751 views  Sep 13, 2026

Remember Columbia House? 12 CDs for a penny. Those colorful magazine ads were almost impossible to resist if you grew up in the ’80s or ’90s. For a lot of us, Columbia House helped build our very first music collections.

But behind those unbelievable deals was one of the strangest business models in music history.

In this video, we take a deep dive into the history of Columbia House Record Club, from the famous “12 CDs for 1¢” offers and Selection of the Month cards to negative-option billing, huge markups, questionable artist royalties, teenage loopholes, fake names, pet memberships, collection letters, and some absolutely massive music-club scams.

We’ll look at how Columbia House actually made money, why record labels went along with it, how kids figured out ways to beat the system, and the incredible story of a New Jersey man who used more than 1,600 aliases to obtain over 22,000 CDs.

And now, after more than 70 years, the Columbia House story is finally coming to an end.

If you were ever a member of Columbia House or BMG Music Service, we want to hear your story.

What were your original 12 albums?

Did you ever forget to decline the Selection of the Month?

Did you use a fake name or address?

And be honest… do you still owe Columbia House money?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87T3BQpHcNY

[corbe]

  It was instrumental in rebuilding my Music collection after half disappeared in my first divorce.  I anticipated the quarterly sales catalogues and buy albums and CD's for just over a buck.  Didn't realize they paid the Artists so little. 
  I was diligent in returning the monthly flavor card marked NO!

[Cyber Liberty]

I never go suckered into any of the record clubs, there were a few competitor clubs.  It wasn't hard to figure some things out, though.  First, never join a club tied to a Label!  The selections are limited to Artists on that label.  Secondly, if you don't make a choice in a timely manner, you got shit albums nobody wants at top prices.  That's assuming you saw anything you want (see Note 1 above).  Columbia, in particular, moved a lot of Barbra Streisand albums that way...she cut a lot of crap albums nobody wanted!  Either way, you paid full retail when you could have gotten better deals at the local record stores, even in a small town like the one I grew up in.

One good thing about record clubs:  They were my first introduction to the concept, "If it sounds too good to be true, it is!"

[Wingnut]

Columbia and RCA Record club too.  I never fulfilled either of them.   Got a couple of demand letters but I ignored them.  I think the limitations has run out on those payment requests.....

[libertybele]

So it's not an AirBNB?   

[Sighlass]

I played around with the selections and found they really didn't have the music I mostly listened to. Basically they were hosted by their own petard by lackluster selections. Plus I knew there had to be a catch, though I never investigated it enough to understand the "gotcha" until this video.

[Luis Gonzalez]

I may owe them $$$.

[DefiantMassRINO]

No, but I did buys records from K-Tel.

Could the demise of Columbia House have anything to do with the demise of the U.S. penny?

[Free Vulcan]

I was till there were no more CD's I wanted to buy. I got some good music, they made some money off me, and a good time was had by all.

[berdie]

I used Columbia House. And it was darn hard to get rid of them once the commitment was met. But I still enjoyed it while there.

There was a store (Tower Records, maybe?) that I passed on my way home from work. They became my new poison. You could buy used cds and trade in the old ones you no longer wanted.

The thing about streaming, imho, is that there were so many "secondary" songs on the cds/records that were great.

[jmyrlefuller]

Built a decent collection of CDs from them, or something like them. We'd bought a CD player and wanted some music to play on it. Got several country and classic rock records. I don't recall having any issues with ending the subscription when the time came. We didn't have a computer or Internet until the early 2000s so that was our music listening.