I signed up with maybe Columbia but I don’t remember doing anything other than the initial CDs for cheap.
I do remember some of the CDs I got…Blues Traveller, Trainspotting soundtrack, Blur, best of Elton John. Turns out I just was never in to pop music and could not find anything I was remotely interested in after the initial run.
One trick to get out of your purchase obligation was to send in a change of address, and never talk to the record club again. They couldn’t track you down since you never gave them a bank account or credit card number, and by the time they figured out the new address was a fake, they had already purged your old address from their system. Eventually they caught on to this method, though.
Also, the BMG club used to have special deals where you could purchase three or more albums by the same artist at the same time, using a single code number to get a small discount. The trick of this is that you could use that same code in your initial sign-up deal, if you had a newsletter from a friend or a previous membership. So with a little research, you could get up to 20 albums for a penny instead of 9 or 12.
My brother belonged to one back when they actually still sold records (those 12-inch vinyl things they used to have in the Stone Age, remember?). He kept forgetting to send back the card, and since we had different musical tastes he’d give me an option on whatever had suddenly shown up in the mail. “You want this one?” “Well, I wasn’t planning to go out and buy it, but since it’s already here, yeah, what the heck.”
I still have some of those albums tucked away in a dusty corner.
I did both BMG and Columbia several times, doing the join-and-quit thing so I could maximize the number of free CDs I got. I was happy with it–the shipping costs weren’t that bad, and I got a whole lot of CDs I wouldn’t normally have bought due to having to find 8 or 13 or 15 or whatever that I wanted.
I did those clubs on and off for years. I eventually canceled all of them except for Columbia House DVD club. But by the time I joined them I had learned to not bother opening the monthly announcement mailer and then, when the automatic offering arrived to write “Refused - Return” on it unopened and to drop it back in the mailbox. They kept sending me stuff for years before finally giving up. I never did buy anything towards my commitment. I wonder how much I cost them in postage alone?
Ditto to what Tangent said – if you can find enough of what you actually want in their catalog, you could (at least back in the mid-2000s) work the price per CD to well below what you’d pay in a brick-and-mortar shop. Something called “Yourmusic” (I believe) got big about that time and was a similar deal, minus the buy-in. I think it was just cheap CDs, but I think they had some kind of subscription thing tied into it that was easy to fulfill. Could be wrong, but I got a shitload of CDs from them.
And before then, there was “emusic” – a record club for those with broadband (or patience and a dial-up). Monthly subscription, n downloads (or unlimited in the early days).
I’m ashamed I blew off my obligation to the History Book Club, though, a long time ago. They even gave me a snazzy tote bag as a come-on, in addition to four pretty good books.
I joined Columbia House in the early 80s, when I was in high school. Belonged to it for several years, through college, at least. I did get a couple of “accidental” records when I forgot to send back the form, but otherwise, I liked it.
I haven’t been in the club for probably 25 years now, but they stalked me for a very long time, sending me “Come Back” mailings for many, many years.
And about a year ago they stopped making you respond to selections, and stopped sending their mailer. Now it is just a website and a mailing list.