Hey Kids! We didn't have SPOTIFY back then, we had THIS! :(
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- -Hey Kids! We didn't have SPOTIFY back then, we had THIS! :(
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Thanks!!!
OMG I still have the Wang Chung tape in the wrapper because I forget to send it back what a nightmare, but I still have the first set of albums I ordered and so many tapes haha I use them in the garage "boom box" great trip down memory lane thanks
This made my day! Wang Chung! And yes everybody did Wang Chung tonight. 🤣
I'm a little bit older I was born in 67 but when these things first came out I was in my early twenties and i had a job didn't care about credit ratings or none of that. and I went completely off the deep end.. i got as many CDs from as many different companies that were offering this. I ended up with a total of 60+ CDs. with the full intent of never paying them back {yes I know it was evil } then later i moved so i didn't get anymore letters so didn't think about till years later when i went to finance my first car. lol and then i was reminded again with my 1st bad credit strike LOL
LOL, my band used to play Dance Hall Days by Wang Chung back in 84 or so! Hated playing that stuff! Just wanted to play VH, AC/DC, Sabbath, etc! 🤘🏼Even played some Haircut 100 and NENA🤮
I remember with Columbia house, you told them when you signed up the type of music you liked and they would send you mail featuring the tape of the month. You had to send the card back saying weather you wanted the cassette of the month. If you didn't send the card back they would just send you the cassette. But the deal was that in order to finish your contract you had to buy 8 additional cassettes off them. But they would also send you the book, you weren't limited to just buying the cassette of the month. You could select 8 additional cassettes (1 per month) of your choice out of the book.
The Columbia house hitmen have been chasing me most of my life, I just keep running with my 8 for 1 cent music!!!!! lolz!
When I finally learned that they had no way to collect the money, and legally could do nothing, I made about 12 accounts, and maybe bought three CD’s ever, because it was one for three.
Between Colombia and BMG, I got nearly 200 CD’s.
They sent bills to people that didn’t exist, until I finally had my older brother call them, and he threatened to sue for harassing a child, as I was 14, which they apologized and closed the accounts.
CD’s were a huge scam. Made for pennies, sold for $20+ at first, then regularly $15, for years. It’s why those companies didn’t care about giving so many away.
The real trick was getting them to send a full catalogue, because most ads didn’t even have 10% of their selection of music.
Just my close group of friends, probably got a thousand CD’s from them between them.
To get the free CD’s one was supposed to buy the same number of CD’s, tapes or vinyl.
They banked on parents just paying it, because most people didn’t check the laws on it.
A letter or call from a parent was all that was needed to get them to stop sending bills or new stuff.
They continued sending me offers for 8 CD’s for 1¢, for a decade.
The fact they were advertising to kids, gave them no recourse, and they couldn’t affect any credit score.
They were giving it away, so kids would become adult consumers.
OMG!!! I felt like you were narrating my adolescence back to me!!!! I too, did both Columbus House AND BMG!!!😂😂😂
Something that is really sad and missing today is how special it was when you got a record, tape, or CD of one of your favorite bands. It was special because you couldn't just go to UA-cam or Spotify and listen to anything you want. I got Somewhere in Time for my 16th birthday and was just like 'Oh my God, this is so awesome!' I hadn't even seen the cover yet. I was going to say I can't believe you bought Tiffany before remembering that I bought Britney Spears Toxic.
It was the same feeling when we had to wait months after buying concert tickets to see the show. No UA-cam concert videos. Nope, you just had to wait. The shows back then seemed cooler. 👽✌️
Absolutely@@Psychodermia
The part about recording songs off the radio hit home for me. So many songs with cut off intro's. lol!
I did the same and my first "stereo" was reel to reel
I remember sitting down with my friends to fill out our Columbia House orders, so we each got unique albums, which we would immediately make copies of for each other. Then spend all day writing song titles on the Maxell or TDK cassette inserts.
Ride the Lightning wouldn’t quite fit on a cassette, and to this day when I hear Call of Ktulu, my brain expects it to cut off the last 45 seconds of the song.
Yorkshire problems!
I used to use BMG. They were easy to -exploit- buy from.
Edit: I keep making new accounts with my same address. So I would get 15 cds and only have to pay for one, then I would just cancel the membership immediately and then make a new one. They never caught on or just didn’t care.
I basically obtained the entire 1978-1993 Prince Discography through BMG by signing up a friend and getting 8 free CDs as a result. Not my fault if a business model has that many holes in it.
They didn’t care.
They had no legal recourse, and they couldn’t legally collect, as many people used fake names or just would call and say “Stop sending bills or anything else,” and they would quit.
I remember when I’d meet someone whose parents thought they were going to be arrested, or their credit ruined, and told them they could cancel membership without paying anything. They’d never believe me, until finally calling and doing it. Then, the parents started doing it too.
It was crazy. It was all a promotional scam, to get some money. The cost of one CD, would make them a profit of pennies to $20+.
They were losing nothing, because CD’s were such a scam too. I remember when stories broke, about how much the costs to make CD’s actually was. People were pissed, but artists thought it was how they made money, even though the artists really didn’t make a lot, compared to how much they cost.
I had many names to use for BMG as well
My dog had an account! And you could buy box sets in the initial order. A five CD box set would count as five cds.
As much as Columbia House was a pain in the ass, I wouldn't have NEAR the musical tastes I have now if it weren't for it. I got into it in 1994 or 1995ish. I ordered all the Pantera albums from them, which made them my favorite band all through the 90s, virtually. They eventually allowed you to send back a mailer they'd send instead of sending back the album (so you'd get a mailer for the next month, they'd tell you what was coming in the mail, and you had to send back the mailer to tell them NOT to send it). If you didn't send it back, they assumed you wanted it, and sent the garbage album to you. Then, they would charge you if you didn't send it back (so you had 2 opportunities, then you were charged).
Columbia House eventually got cracked down on because they didn't care who sent the initial form. Whether they were 7 or 77, they'd try and get you trapped, so they had to close up shop. But that was around when Napster started to get big, so they probably were out the door anyway (along with BMG, who you mentioned as well).
Yeah, kids don't know the pain of having to buy an entire CD of garbage to have 1 good song. You NEVER have to do that anymore. Don't like the rest of the album? Drop $1.99 for the single and play it to your hearts content. I remember hearing "In the Meantime" by Space Hog. I really liked the song, so I ordered that album and the rest of it was absolute garbage (in MY opinion). I spent like $12.99 on a CD for 1 song. My kids will NEVER know that pain!
🤘🏻🔥love this. Such a nostalgia trip. I loved my cassettes, still have a handful, such a weird coincidence I just wrote a comment on a post about looking at liner notes in cassettes/ cds as you uploaded this. I just got Bostons Don't look back album on cd 😊.
Congrats on 870k Subscribers!
I had an old coworker who fell into this. She finally sent them a letter saying “please stop sending mail to Debbie. She died”. It worked.
I lived in a rural area, so Columbia House was the only way to get music. It wasn’t long before six guys who didn’t exist were getting groups of twelve cassettes at a time, at an address that was an abandoned vacation home. But heck, I ended up with a respectable music collection.
That is such a great blast from the past. Remembering the joy of looking through the Columbia House catalogue of music they would send. Seeing the discounted prices on older cassette tapes that weren’t as expensive as the new releases on the front two pages. And just as he stated, the excitement of receiving that box in the mail with your newly delivered music 6 to 8 weeks later. Such a beautiful memory. ☺️
9:23 kids back then, we had next to nothing. Kids these days have everything they could ever want in terms of entertainment.
I did the Columbia House thing as well lol. One thing I miss from those days was going to the record store and hanging out for hours looking at all the albums and if I had money at the time I would buy one.
Columbia house was my gateway to metallica,megadeth, slayer and a few others I read about in rock mags in the 80's
The feeling of holding physical media like a new cassette can not be over-stated - and this must have been 100x more with vinyl albums. I'm very jealous that I missed the vinyl era. The size of the artwork and inner sleeves, and even the weight of a vinyl album in your hands - not to mention the absolute classic albums from those years - must have made the experience feel truly magical. Physical media was special.
That being said I would have traded all of that for the age of UA-cam, cell phones, and Blueooth. Had you told me back then that I could listen to any album, any song - and hundreds of live recordings of most of those songs, as well as studio outtakes and isolated tracks, etc etc - with a magic device that I keep in my pocket like a pack of gum, that connects to both my home and car stereo automatically... I would make that trade immediately.
Throw in a bonus offer of video footage from every concert ever recorded and I would have likely sold my soul. Which is essentially what we've all done, but that's another rant all together.
Don't be sad you missed the vinyl era. Heavy, scratches, pops, clicks, and SKIPS......all the crap that people erroneously think makes it better. It doesn't.
Mike, the same exact thing happened to me, only they were LPs (Vinyl albums) as it was in the early 1970s. For a nickel, I would get several records. So I ordered them and waited, finally they came and I was so excited. Then within a few days I received a bill for shipping, $2.37, I ignored it. Then records started coming in, and kept them and ignored the invoices. I hid them. Finally my mom was hip to what was happening, called the record company, cancelled the contract as unenforceable due to my age being "about 14", shipped back some of the records, and settled the bill.
Columbia House 12 or 13 cassettes for a penny! Man, those were the days!
BMG was 7 CDs, I think?
I had another that sent CDs of singles from different groups. Can't remember the name, though...
"Now This Is Music !" #1-60...🙂
I did Columbia House a couple of times with vinyl albums. I sent the cards back most of the time, so it worked out fine for me. I did buy a few marginal things to complete my obligations. I got the entire Police discography from them. I think I have a few years on you so I was able to read and process the fine print. As much as I love the unlimited information in the palm of my hand, I think those old days were better in a lot of ways. I miss the innocence and not knowing how awful so many people are which is now exposed constantly in Internet postings.
People ARE more awful now, objectively. What we're seeing is also then reflecting who they are in different ways than we used to express ourselves in the past when we weren't as awful.
I was lucky since my mom worked in a record store we got hefty discounts on albums. It also made my mom hip to what kids were up to. When I went through my breakdance phase I got a 3 stripe Adidas jacket for my birthday. 😀
I’m early gen Z and you’ve put me on to so much good music. Grew up listening to mostly 70s, 80s, and 90s rock so your videos feel right at home for me
Only four dollars a week allowance. I might get that for my birthday. I mowed yards for two dollars a lawn. Speaking of which, get off mine! Good video.
I'm pretty sure I was in both of those too, first for cassettes, then for CDs. Maybe they changed it, because I seem to remember you could send the card back and check the box where you didn't want them to send you the featured cassette that month, or you could order something else. Then they'd have sales every so often...
I used to love Mordred. They had some great songs!!
BMG was key to my massive CD collection. No regrets.
Same here at least 100 cds.
man catalogs are so nostalgic for me because of that aspirational part of wanting to eventually get the things i circle or bookmark and columbia house was one of those catalogs id flip through along with musicians friend and of course the sears catalog
as a 45 years old metalhead i love listening to your stories and time travel with them
Been there myself!!! Love the memories of how we used to get music. We really appreciated it more- I have all the same memories you listed- I definitely sat with the radio waiting to record my favorite songs- or I front of the TV waiting for MTV to play something so I could record that- with all the extra white noise and hiss that came along with it! I didn't care- it was so worth it!!!
I did it in the 90's, but by then it was CDs
My version of "how do you go from Overkill to Tiffany?" is "Morbid Angel to Debbie Gibson." 😂
Thanks for the memory trip! I still have my Columbia House vinyls.
I had the VHS version of the Doomsday News compilation which featured videos by a lot of obscure European bands. That's how I discovered bands like Coroner, Celtic Frost, and Voivod which would become one of my favorite bands of all time. Back then I bought cassette tapes from the record stores at the mall.
1988...the best xmas ever. Got my jon Cusack/run dmc boom box! A huey lewis tape and a mini richie valens cd . Did you know they made mini cds?
Lol, my father had two black hefty garbage bags full of columbia House Penny cds.
Mixed tapes remember those?....Theres songs to this day i know all the words to but have no idea who the artist is because of mixed tapes!
I'm glad you got through that bit of craziness, man. Good lessons about accountability and all. Thanks Mike.👍
I lived this! Thanks for taking me down memory lane Mike 🤙
Columbia house was seriously the only way I could get CDs. And it was so many. This was a great bit of nostalgia for me. Thanks!
They got your DNA from that penny.... lol. Great story. I somehow never got to buy any of those tapes but I totally remember "12 tapes for one cent!" ads.
I love these stories. They very much remind me of my childhood discovering music
It's crazy. Discovering new music back then really felt like a discovery, it was special. My parents never let me send away for Columbia House, though I'd stare at those ads in wonder, trying to image what Iron Maiden could possibly sound like. But, there were all the other ways, digging through my best friends older cousin's albums (and guitar magazines, once I started playing guitar), trading tapes with friends in the middles school halls, chilling in my friend's dad's basement listening to all his father's records (all the good stuff, AC/DC, Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, all of it). Once I started going to shows, I loved when people would hand out singles for new bands, or in later years CD samplers for record labels, like the old roadrunner samplers, or Ozzfest samplers. Some much of that stuff I wish I still had. I had single tapes of songs that I loved, from bands that I have forgotten, that I will never hear again. Lost to the annals of time. But, it all was special. I knew it all inside and out. Now, it's seldom I find new music I really like and when I do, it seems I never get around to really listening to it. There is just too much and I can find anything I want. I even found one of those bands I was talking about that got lost. It was a band called Pushmonkey, I don't remember what the A side was, but the B side was a song could Crush It. It's right on Amazon music. I can listen to it anytime I want. I almost never do.
I remember doing the same 1cent cassette thing.😂
About thirty years ago, when I was still in high school, I joined BMG. Right after I got my first job (twenty hours a week at $7.50 an hour), BMG sent me a catalog with a ridiculous sale: buy one at full price, and get unlimited albums at something like up to fifty percent off. So, figuring that I was financially set with my new job, and not really having read all of the fine print, I ordered 21 (!) CDs. I sent it off, thinking I could easily afford everything when the packages came with no problem...and I was let go from that job literally the next day.
It was too late to cancel the order, and sure enough, it came in the mail a little while later -- and it was far more costly than I had expected. And I was unemployed again. My parents were not happy at all, but they did end up helping me out. I was also encouraged not to go overboard again whenever they had one of their sales again.
I am 61. First I got vinyl from Columbia House. Then later cassettes. And then later CDs. I still have them all. And I love them. I used to play air guitar on a tennis racket. Now I have 15 electric guitars and actually play my Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Judas Priest, and Nirvana songs. What a joy!!! Thanks, Columbia House. I got a lifelong love of music for $1.99, as long as I purchased 7 more albums at "full price."
I definitely remember those adds. I think I got the 12 for a penny. 90% sure I did. I knew there was a catch but it never happened. I'm either remembering wrong I remember I had 2 tapes in my collection I never listened to after hearing the first part of a song. I probably missed the bad part cause we moved like 5 times in less than a year so they never tracked me down.
Oh yeah, BMG was pure gold for a pre-teen music lover. Definitely was a big part of the beginning of my music collection.
Reliving my youth watching this, so many memories and lessons learned 😊
I was one of the few that actually enjoyed Columbia House. When I joined back in 94 it was 12 cds for a cent. Then you had to buy three at a regular club price over the next year. You also got to pick your genre of what their monthly pick would be that you would have to accept or decline. My monthly pick was metal haha! I easily got three more at club price to fulfill the contract. But what i loved is then they kept having deals like buy one get two free. If you didn't pick your two free ones at the time you ordered, they would send you a free CD ticket or tickets that you threw in the order slip when you did finally pick them. The only thing i got boned on was they had a thing where when you get a friend to sign up and when they completed their contract you get 12 CDs free and clear. My Aunt never followed through on her end and i never got my free CDs..... Funny thing is i still remember what most of the CDs were that i picked that i never got. My parents were impressed that i actually stayed on top of it. They still bring it up to this day as the horror stories they heard of their friends kids had with Columbia House at that time. Man you are sooo right about not having instant access to the songs you wanted to hear. Like you said the instant joy when a song came on the radio or your friend would let ya borrow their copy. Great video, and i still remember running across my room jumping over things just to hit record with a tape in the radio to get a song i liked. Man i miss those times.....
I have a new respect for you. It's like watching myself. I hope your videos teach me guitar. Lol. I've always wanted to learn.
I remember doing Columbia House when I was young. They had individual stamps for each CD and you had to rip them out and lick them to put them on the order form. After getting my initial order I remember getting Freak Show by Silver chair sent to me out of the blue. I ended up thinking it looked stupid and sending it back having never heard of Silver Chair. I remember getting it canceled right after that. I ended up hearing about Silver Chair a year or so later and buying the album that I had sent back and loving it. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
The problem with the BMG and Columbia H. CD pressings were that they did not sound as good as the regular store bought pressings. I had them tested by an audiophile and he confirmed what my ears heard.
I totally understood the Columbia House deal and had no problem. Totally worth it.
I used both BMG and Colombia House. I don't recall ever being shipped anything that I didn't order. As I recall, both would send you a card/catalog and they would tell you what album would be shipped to you each month. If you didn't want it, you'd mark that you weren't interested in their selection. You could either choose a different slection or none.
What a sweet video. My first Columbia order was 1989. It was CD and I believe it was 5 title (maybe 6?) - in that order I had: Living Color, Vivid. Tesla, the Great Radio Controversy. Skid Row, Skid Row. Gnu Appetite for Destruction. I can’t remember all. And it was our first CD player ! We were not rich but music and sound systems were very important to my parents! So were instruments. What great memories. Thanks for the content, it’s really good stuff and helps my guitar playing even after about 40yrs plating. Cheers, MC
Oh, and my first ‘’automatic send’’ CD was Blue Murder, Blue Murder. Actually a formidable band and pretty good album. Did not return it, and canceled immediately. Cheers,
Once I reached my teens, I had the luxury of a public library system well-stocked by librarians with similar music tastes to mine. It was always a special day when you heard that a library next city over had a pile of Dead Milkmen vinyls.
Tapes and cds were the best. We would always go straight to the thank yous and scan them hard. Because bands and artist would usually thank other bands. Thats how we would discover a ton of new(to us) music. The thank yous and the lyrics were so great. I would re read an albums liner notes a hundred times. Those were the days, man.
BREAKdancing 😂👍 In the SF Bay Area we had tons of record stores & used options. We also had weekend Album to Cassette recording parties. Listen + Copy. I still have approx 100 of my orgininal Albums from the late 60's to early 80's. Good memories, thanks for sharing ✌️
That’s so funny hahaha
I did everything you mentioned.I remember reading the inside of the cassette and jammin out. Good times,good times
Columbia House! I loved perusing their inserts in the Sunday paper.
You can do another episode on what a newspaper is.
Thank you for speaking up for lyrics and album info sheets. Those were the best reading. "Benmont Tench played on this too?"
Awesome memories! The next best thing to vinyl IMO! Maybe somehow better?! Cause of the mobility factor of the boom box (8xD batteries and when they start dying the songs are tuned down a half step! ) but the walkman helped! Also playing two of the same tapes (you copied one) at the same time on the double deck you could get chorus and flanger effects !!!
Ohh, something VERY similar happened to me as a teenager! 😅 I felt SO bad, because I knew my parents really didn't have a lot of money, so I kept trying to ignore the problem, which of course just made it much worse.
I'm from Denmark, so you wouldn't know the company - but things got even more complicated for me, because they wouldn't cancel my subscription. You had to cancel by snail mail, and my letters were conveniently "lost" every time.
And, because I was trying to cancel my subscription, I never actually changed the "album of the month" to one I actually wanted to listen to, so they just kept sending me albums I didn't even want.
My dad eventually fixed it, I'm not sure how. But to this day, I really look into a company or service first before I sign up for anything. Of course you couldn't do that back then, there was no google, reddit or facebook to warn you.
I'll never forget that knot of fear in my poor little teenage stomach every time a new bill, with interests and legal threats, came in the mail 😅
45 years ago I ordered the Columbia house deal, 13 albums for a penny. After I received them, I never heard from them again. I didn't try to ditch them they just never sent me anything.
13 albums for a penny.
Love Mordred!!! In This Life still gets played at the house.
I keep watching your channel and you not sure how old you are but you look young ..I'm 54 and remember all the stuff your talking about but then again I can't remember when we all bankrupt Columbia House with our pennies lol .I always had Ozzy or Black Sabbath in my 8+1... Lol Great channel though I think I'll subscribe..my favorite Colors are Red,White and Black also ..Cool T-shirt's in your store BTW...Thanks for the trip back in time Old Man..🤣🤣🤣😎✌️
Columbia House and BMG had a location in IN, so we had tons of mailers. I had so many of those white tapes.
😊 This brings back so many memories for me. 💿
I had flash backs during this video. The book club thing I used to do all the time and was so excited. Excuse me, I badgered my parents to do the book club thing for me all the time, and I was excited. I collected comics when I was a kid so I saw those 10-15 for a penny adds all the time. I would take some time to check out what albums they had and see which one I like and ones I've never heard of. I never did one though. Your story is priceless. I was laughing so hard. Father: did you read the fine print? Mike: What the hell is fine print? I still want hard copies of my music so I have a lot of CD's. However, I can't keep up my collection with the music I like coming out now a days. I don't make enough to go out and buy 15 CD's at once because I discovered some good bands on UA-cam or Spotify.
Did Columbia and BMG, both. Multiple memberships from both. My friends and I used to get together and pick all different tapes and then copy them for each other. We all ended up with those huge, double sided suitcases full of all our favorites!
Haha. I still remember the collection letter: “there comes a time when you can no longer soft-soap a situation”. I had to go to my dad too. And it opened my eyes to new music as well. Master of Puppets was the first cassette I played. Battery blew my mind when the acoustic intro transitioned to that brutal riff…
I remember laying out new cassettes on the bed admiring them, and going through the fold out while listening to them. My whole world would stop for new or used cassettes.
That brought back so many memories!
We had a similar thing here in the UK called 'Brittania Music Club' back in the day (vinyl or cassette). It was mostly MOTR stuff, but my Dad was a member and I do remember him getting the first three Ramones albums & the two New York Dolls albums for me in 1977😎
My mom actually joined both Columbia House AND RCA Music Service when I was a kid. (The joys of being an only child! 😆)
The only reason why she stopped was I wound up with two copies of the debut album by Shaun Cassidy! (No laughing from the peanut gallery, that album is still great today.) And, she also figured that it was faster just to get the albums and cassettes at the stores. (And no, she didn’t gripe about doing it - she actually was expanding my listening: I think I was the only 8-9 year old who knew about Hank Williams, Sr., Glen Campbell and Helen Reddy while still listening to Nick Gilder, Shaun Cassidy and The Who!)
In my mom's eyes, Columbia House and BMG Music Service were on par with strange men in vans offering free candy to children at the local park. I was taught to avoid them like the plague. In my teenage years, I defied my mother and joined both clubs. I'm proud to say, I was extremely responsible and didn't have any issues with them. When/if I purchased from them, I would buy several albums at a time, which thanks to their constant "deals" meant that my per average tape/CD price was not too shabby. In later years, you could decline their monthly selections via the Internet, which greatly helped me avoid unwanted shipments.
Side note: although I love Overkill, I'm more of a Debbie Gibson guy than a Tiffany guy. I'll jam to Electric Youth any day.
Love these videos this one especially took me back , I still remember getting that same package , 😂
I never had to go down that route to get my cassettes because there was a choice of record shops just a bus ride away, although I couldn't get a lot of the small independent label stuff from bands I'd read about in Sounds or Kerrang, unless I waited for the possibility of a trip to London, where I could find them in Tower Records or a specialist shop.
I still have all my tapes from when I got my first player in 1980, and still play them occasionally.
There was another option which was to go to the library and borrow a tape or album. I remember discovering Free and Allan Holdsworth on vinyl. The Free album was scratched to hell. I copied it onto tape and listened to it for ages until I was able to find a clean copy.
Such a good story. I think the terms changed just a few years later as we're the same age and I signed up for this program in my first year of college and it really was 12 cassettes for a penny. And if you wanted more you could buy more but were not obligated to do so and they didn't send you a random cassette each month. I still think back fondly how that was probably the best investment I ever made. 🤗🤔😂😉
Awesome video! I've heard cassette tapes are making a bit of a comeback recently. I'm kinda curious to dip my toes into getting a decent player and some cassettes !
Btw; great storytelling as always, Mike
I built up my CD collection through BMG. Although, reading through the comments, it never occurred to me to sign up under different names. I could have really multiplied my collection using that scheme. I do remember that before they'd send you the monthly CD, they'd send a notice first stating which CD was coming up and you had to send the notice back saying you didn't want it and if you did that they wouldn't send it. I only failed a couple times to send back that notice. I still have Melissa Ethridge's "Breakdown" in it's shrink wrap.
I still have my Case-logic CD binders full of Columbia House and BMG CDs! Also remember opening the cardboard boxes they came in.
I remember that time. I was also a member of Columbia Music. On the other hand, I was lucky because my father had worked for the post office and had given me a good trick to avoid paying shipping costs when I didn’t want an album ; you had to completely mask home's address with a black marker and write 'return to sender'' with an arrow to the Columbia address. So, no shipping costs when not buying :)
I had one of those 12 deck cassette copy recorders and we recorded onto a Teac or Tascam 4 track reel to reel, put the 4 tracks on track 4 and recoded another 1-3 tracks, and then we put the 4-7 tracks onto a stereo reel to reel, (another Teac or Tascam, or an Akai), and then after that mixdown it went onto a cassette and we'd copy the cassettes at 2x speed 12 at a time. Our J cards were all hand drawn, IF you even got one. Then when we played live we sold cassettes of our music. I'd save parts I wanted to pan left right for the doubled 3 tracks, so on playback to mixdown I could pan them left to right, unless we could do a song with only 4 tracks. Then we got a beat up Otari 8 track 1/2 inch RtR from an old TV station. Now we could double those 8 tracks and add 7 tracks for 15! And those got put to cassette and copied 12 at a time recorded at double speed. You could try 4x speed but it was sketchy.
Same story for me, but I was a BMG guy. Also that Tiffany tape perfectly encapsulated teenage longing in the late 80’s.
I loved Columbia House and BMG. Got a bunch of good stuff from them over the years. My memory is that they would send you a card telling you what your monthly suggestion was, though. So if you didn't want it, you just marked the card and sent that back.
Doomsday News 2 was awesome! Noise Records was a hit or miss company but they had a lot of great stuff like Helloween, Kreator, Running Wild, Coroner, and Rage.
My brother was getting cassettes from BMG when I first started listening to metal and rock so he ordered Poison and Def Leppard for me. I joined both Columbia House and BMG CD club in 1992. Among my 12 CDs for a penny from Columbia House I remember getting "Countdown To Extinction", "The Ritual" by Testament, "Horrorscope" by Overkill, "Fear" by Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Vulgar Display of Power", but can't recall what else.
At some point after forgetting enough times to tell them not to send me the month's selection and sending it back to them, and ordering CDs but not paying for them, they eventually canceled my account. But by then I had a drivers license and could go to the mall to get CDs.
Ur so much fun ❤❤❤❤
I never pulled the trigger on the Columbia House or BMG thing but I remember sitting with my finger on the record button waiting for a song I liked to come on the radio, lol
I listened to everything on cassette in the 80s. Thats why I still have the habit of listening to whole albums instead of singles.
I got a job at McD's to pay for stuff and never signed up for Columbia house until the 90's when I had a real job. So I never had any debt with them.
I can almost hear the slow Leave it to Beaver theme when you had to tell your dad. 😂
I remember in high school paying kids that had computers at home to make a mix cd for me! Times have sure changed.
I did the Columbia house thing too. lol. It was so temping to us at that time. But my grass cutting income came in handy for me. But I’d get those tapes that I just didn’t want and I’d send them back. I would write “return to sender xxoo Elvis” on the box.
Heyo, its me AceFace on my phone. I love cassettes so much tbh. I have so much tapes from the 80s and 90s they are so good. Im disappointed in other kids nowadays because all they do is use spotify. I use CDs, Cassettes, and Vinyl. I only use spotify for like overpriced albums that i dont feel like paying for. Great video, Mike.
Hey man, you don't look the age to have used a cassette player radio. 😉😁
My father bought his last cassette in '92 when I was three years old.
My first radio was a CD-/Cassette-Ghettoblaster on which I recorded two or three mix-tapes from the radio.
I ordered ...And Justice For All through one of them. After a month and a half, I kept checking the mail everyday super excited to get it. Never did. It ended up being 6 months of checking the mail till I get fed up and just went to the record store and picked it up. The only plus of it is my dad felt bad for me for waiting so long and them never fulfilling the order that he bought CD for me.
I just changed the name but sent to same address. Had a huge selection of cassettes by the time CD's rolled around.
Well back in the day you could do the BMG or Columbia House or being in Chicago we could go to record stores like Tower, Rolling Stone or Wax Trax. We did the mix tapes and would do full albums or CD's to tape as well. So we were not too limited.
I did the Columbia house and BMG as well. Huge mistake with Columbia House. BMG I did when working in high school so it was easier.
Yes we had our boom boxes, walkmans and loud stereos with subwoofers. Exciting times.
We also would buy the zines like Kerrang, Metal Forces and Metal Hammer.
Ordering import albums, CD's or cassettes that was painful. 2 to 4 months.
Now a days its all there. So spoiled today.
As a kid from the 80's I would go to my local library and checkout albums. Then I would copy it to tape and save the best songs on a mix tape. That's how I found Cream, Jimi Hendrix etc.
I remember doing this as well.. I remember I seen “the blackest album” and couldn’t wait to order it… omg what a surprise.😞
I did the exact same thing with my very first Columbia house package haha. In my box was Apatite for destruction, So Far So Good...So What. Randy Rhoads tribute, Justice for all, Zeppelin 3, Permanente Vacation, and for the life of me I can't remember what else.
About 3/4 of my cd collection came from Columbia House, or BMG. Was incredible. Only had to pay full price for 1 maybe and then cancel.
I did a selection of Kiss albums for the record version of Columbia House, then I chose all of Madonna's albums plus a few metal albums for the cassettes but I can't remember what I got for the CDs. I do remember getting The Fugitive, Escape from New York and Star Wars.