The Cult of Columbia House
If you were a fan of music in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, then chances are you were a member of Columbia House at some point. This mail order distributor of music for the masses was the cheap and easy way for music lovers to build their personal collections in the days before digital streaming put everything in the world instantly at your fingertips.
Columbia House began in 1955 as a way for Columbia Records to market and sell their artists outside of stores. Mail order was common practice in those days, and Columbia House perfected the process. They began by selling vinyl records, and later adapted to offer other formats as they became popular — cassette tapes, CDs, even 8-tracks. (For those of you asking, “WTF is an 8-track?”, Ars Technica has the low-down.)
There were a number of record companies selling music through the mail, and RCA and Capitol Records were Columbia House’s chief rivals. Each mail order house would only sell records from their own label, so if a consumer wanted to be hip and have all the latest hits, they would have to be a member of several different clubs to keep up.
Columbia House cut through the clutter by making deals with other record labels like Warner Brothers, Mercury, and so forth to feature their artists in Columbia House mailers. Before long, this wider selection made Columbia House the undisputed heavyweight champ…
