BMG CDs Everywhere! Why So Many From This Music Club?

If I’m not mistaken CH CDs has a slightly different looking bar code that was ‘flat’ and not staggered like the retail version. That’s always been my tell.

 

Turns out you've got the right idea - like streaming, CD clubs paid a pittance in royalties:

Not only were customers getting burnt, but in their deviant hunger, CD clubs became famous for jiving even the artists whose music made them rich. All featured acts were paid reduced publishing and royalty rates on the claim that placement in company catalogs was billable advertising — this, while clubs paid the artists’ labels full rates. Such royalty shakedowns were a precursor to the floss-thin rates streaming services currently pay musicians.

Piotr Olov, a former content strategist for Columbia House, recalls, “The labels would get this enormous advance against all this product. And then, of course, that advance didn’t slide down the hill to the artists. The royalty rates were a percentage of what even the crappy major label royalty rates were at the time…basically, it is so Spotify, it’s a joke.”

 

I bought many great CDs from BMG Music Service and YourMusic.com. I got many otherwise rather expensive CDs and 2 CD sets for cheap. It was a great service at the time.

 

My way to tell Columbia House CDs is the CRC on the back(s).

 

CRC was not always there. Sometimes there was fine print that said “Manufactured by Columbia House Under License.” They are also recognizable by the altered catalog numbers (again, only for non-Columbia family labels). The catalog numbers would start with the first letter of the label, e.g. “A” for Atlantic, “W” for Warner Bros, and so on, usually (always?) followed by a 2.

 

Columbia House had the better selection but BMG’s deal was much cheaper. I was a member of both and Columbia House was a way to get discs I already planned to buy but could get them a bit cheaper than a store. BMG is where I was willing to make some blind picks because it was so cheap.

 

To explicitly answer, after a CD master is made, no one NEEDS a "tape" of any kind to replicate it. That's what I mean. For vinyl, you DO need to cut more lacquers (or back then DMM)...which requires a SOURCE...lossy tape--analog or digital that is made during the original mastering session with all the "mastering processing" baked in.

Answer? I mean other answered, but I thought in a way that might not be self explanatory to someone unfamiliar with the process.

 

Towards the end of Columbia House’s run they were no CH markings anywhere on the artwork for non Sony distributed CDs. The bar codes were normal. I have a bunch of examples.

 

Thanks for that. I appreciate the answer. I was kinda more thinking about the LPs but my post doesn't reveal that so that's my bad. I know they can cut corners on CDs with regards to just using a retail CD, shortening the booklet, and things of that sort. I do have a few RCA Club LPs and the lyric sleeves are intact on each one. They also sound okay, though the proper retail version do seem to sound better to me. It would make sense to believe that RCA and Columbia's clubs would cut corners somehow; I just can't recall how if they were doing it.

Ed

 

Did the UPC match up with the retail versions?

 

... the only way one can tell if the CD was a Columbia Record Club edition was the small CRC on the back insert...now with BMG they REMOVED the bar code and placed their BMG Club info...

 

...massive numbers of members...not everyone cheated! ; )

 

Buy one box, set get two free. I'd hit the guys up at work and then we'd split the cost three ways. Was a win all way round. (at least for us)

 

Pretty sure that's how I picked up most of the Miles Davis box sets.

 

that bothered me some back then...when I went used CD shopping I always looked for the retail issued CDs...

 

In my years of thrifting, I've found surprisingly few CDs that are marked as being BMG. There's been a few, but knowing how many people joined those clubs, I would have thought the number would be higher.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

These two Columbia House are identical in every way except for the place of disc manufacture. -West German PDO/US Sanyo
One uses the old West German V2 Target Mastering and the other a dB level shift of the old Japan Black Target