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| Columbia
Record Club was formed in 1955 by CBS/Columbia Records as an experiment
to market music directly by mail, spurring sales to rural consumers and
heading off competition from mail-order companies from outside the record
industry. New members to the club were enticed with a free record just
for joining.
Titles in the club's catalog were only made available 6 months after retail release, and retailers who helped recruit members got a 20% commission. By the end of that year, the club had 125,175 members who had purchased 700,000 records. There is a lot of different sleeves for the Columbia Record club singles over the years, from the 1950's through early 1970's. They could house any of the CBS family of labels, Columbia, Epic, Date, Okeh or CSP (Columbia Special Products) - or no specific label at all, no label name, just label copy. Each month with your received order, you would get a small bonus premium. This could range from a promo single, a specially pressed promo, a sampler EP, or even a samlper pressed at 33 1/3 rpm. If they didn't have specially printed picture sleeves, they would get the record club sleeves. In the early 1970's, Record Club and Promotional givaway were the Playbacks. The Playbacks would come with a return mail postcard with a questionaire inquiring as to the artists likability and so-on. Usually the Record company would also reward you with a gift - another promo item usually - just for taking time to answer the postcard. |
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