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Music Media

CDNow Merges with Columbia House 45

Posted by CmdrTaco from the consolidation dept.
jbiddick wrote in to tell us that CDNOW has merged with Columbia. I guesstimate that Columbia will save $7 Billion in postage by simply not snail mailing me any more crap. We'll see if I need procmail to pick up the slack.
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CDNow Merges with Columbia House More

CDNow Merges with Columbia House

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  • a few clarifications (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This merger is actually a good thing. CDNOW and Columbia House will be legally separate- Columbia House will continue as a music club, and CDNOW will be retail. Their brands will remain different. However, they will both be part of a holding company, owned 37 percent each by Sony and Time Warner. CDNOW's existing stockholders will own the remaining 26 percent.

    CDNOW is only going to get better because of this. Sony and Time Warner are investing a LOT of capital into CDNOW. More money means more distribution centers, more selection, faster delivery, etc.

    Sony and Time Warner are interested in making CDNOW THE music brand on the net. This includes making available for download thousands of full songs... they recognize that this is the future.

    You can watch the press conference on Broadcast.com at http://webevents.broadcast.com/pressconference/pre ss071399/

  • If anyone has ever been on the receiving and of a monthly headache such as Columbia House, you'd agree that this could only be a good thing. Dealing with those autmoatic shipments every month really suck. The only way I could get them to stop is let them ship one and then refuse to pay for it or send it back. That seemed to stop them from coming.
  • You could always buy cds online from launch.com. Their prices average $2 to $4 cheaper per CD, and the shipping charges are about the same as with CDNow. The only downside is a slightly worse selection than CDNow, though it still beats Columbia House's crappy selection.
  • I just joined columbia house a while back and they aren't doing the automatic shipments of the cd of the month anymore. It's much more web savvy from the looks of it. Still get monthly crap, but I'm excited cos' now I might be able to find the weird stuff I really like.

    Wouldnt' that be cool.
  • I listen to a lot of progressive and power metal, and Music Blvd had a much better selection than Amazon. (CDNOW presumably now has Music Blvd's business deals.)

    Also, Amazon's music service sucks apparently. I've never ordered anything from them, but I have two separate accounts from two people who don't know each other of foul-ups in mailing shipments. They were eventually resolved, but it meant a two week delay in each case.

    Kyle
    --
    Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
  • Yes, I use The Laser's Edge and Empire Entertainment (www.empireent.com) for my esoteric stuff. However, CDNOW is cheaper for the common stuff (like Helloween, Gamma Ray, Stratovarius, etc.) I hope they continue to stock this stuff at low prices.

    BTW, my impression of Alta Mira is that it's really expensive; Ken is a lot better for what he carries, and CDNOW is even better for what they carry.

    Kyle

    NP: Lemur Voice, Insights

    --
    Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
  • ...and this doesn't please me one bit. Here's what I see happening:

    1. CDNOW posts losses for another quarter or two.
    2. The collective company then decides that everyone's better served by Columbia House's crappy club.
    3. They jettison CDNOW's distribution channel (which already ate the only other good online music store, Music Boulevard) and all the customers who had built up fast foward rewards points (and free CD's from MusicBlvd) are forced to either forward their points into a new Columbia House membership and pay $16.99/cd, or lose them.
    4. Some choice.


    By the way, Amazon's music service sucks by comparison. I hope this deal doesn't prove bad for customers.

    Kyle

    NP: Ayreon, Actual Fantasy
    --
    Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
  • Please don't confuse Columbia House with Columbia Records. They are totally separate entities.

  • They jettison CDNOW's distribution channel (which already ate the only other good online music store, Music Boulevard)

    Unlikely. Columbia House already has a CDNow-like online store - it's called Total E [totale.com]. I've only ordered from them once to date, but when it arrived I mistook it for a CDNow order - same boxes, same return address, same stripey invoice. So they already use the same distribution center for domestic product, at least (Total E, last I checked, didn't carry imports). Oh, and ironically, the order from Total E shipped the same day I placed it and was in my hands three days later - something that can rarely be said for CDNow since the merger with Music Boulevard. If it wasn't for the more limited selection (not as limited as the Columbia House clubs, but domestic product only) I'd use it as often as CDNow.

    I think people are jumping to conclusions and assuming that CDNow is going to metamorphose into something like the "buy 12CDs at 1c each and receive dozens of CDs you don't want because you forgot to say you didn't want them" Columbia House of old. OK, so I don't know exactly what's going to come out of this, but Columbia House aren't entirely inexperienced when it comes to running a CDNow-like store.

  • Columbia House has a CD club that doesn't require you to send back the damn cards, and you can order online. It's great. Plus the prices are very low, but they always change. This month it's buy 1 at full price ($16.98) get two free. Shipping and handling and tax add another $3 per CD. I usually always get what I want for under $10 total, sometimes $8-9. They recently had a sale on box sets and I got several 3-4 discs sets for $29.95 plus S&H + tax. Not bad. It's called Play. And their selection is growing.

    I'm so used to the cheap prices I won't buy CDs in stores anymore.

  • I listen to the same genres, and have found that there is no best store, but rather, I rotate around among a group of stores, each with it's own strengths. CDNow was one of them, but I must say that they have a problem with things always being backordered.

    Anyway, here's some of the other places I use:

    • AltaMira [aol.com]: ugly web site and it's awkward to set up an account at first, but he makes up for it in selection and service. He's a specialist; the general selection is limited, but the Powermetal selection is very good, with some progressive stuff too.
    • Laser's Edge [lasercd.com]: Another specialist store like AltaMira, but in progressive rock/metal rather than powermetal.
    • CD Quest [cdquest.com]: although their metal selection isn't as good as the specialists, they're not bad. Kinda like CDNow, I guess. Unlike CDNow, they have been excellent about actually filling orders, instead of letting me wonder if it's ever going to actually ship. Prices are good too. They have nearly completely replaced CDNow's old role for me.
    • Amazon [amazon.com]: Since I place an order for books from them about every other month anyway, it's no extra trouble to throw a CD or two in. They will occasionally have a low price on something. Often useful for "mainstream" metal.
    • Also, some record labels will take direct orders, sometimes even undercutting the "real" stores. I don't know why the stores tolerate this, but I'm not complaining. Particularly note-worthy is CenturyMedia [centurymedia.com] where they'll sell just about anything on their label for $11, and several other labels for $12. Metal of all types.
    Between the aforementioned stores, I've been getting my power/prog metalfix pretty reliably. You really don't need CDNow.

    Hope this helps. :-)

  • CDNow may have okay selection, but their prices have always sucked (aside from those rebates they offered on Harmony Central.

    Try www.cdworld.com [cdworld.com]; the prices are cheaper than CDnow and the service is fine.

  • "I guesstimate that Columbia will save $7 Billion in postage by simply not snail mailing me any more crap. We'll see if I need procmail to pick up the slack."

    You're right, Columbia House may not be wasting as much postage with snail mail anymore. But unfortunately for me, they have more than made up that annoyance by having their telemarketing staff bombard me with calls. Being a former Columbia House member, I guess that entitles me to a free annoying phone call every month from these people.
    It's funny to read their sniveling snail mail about how sorry they are for sending you selections of the month, and how they want you back and promise not to do that anymore.
    I don't know about the rest of you, but I find unsolicited phone calls much more annoying than snail mail.

  • Did anyone else watch "60 Minutes" last week, when it was reported that Amazon lost nearly $4 Billion last year, and yet the company is currently worth nearly $10 billion because the growth potential is so great over the next few years ??

    I don't mean to allude to the possibility that Amazon would had struck a deal with Columbia House [but then, if Microsoft can invest in Apple, anything else can happen, right?], but I wonder how CDNow's investment in Columbia House will affect everyone else.

    But more importantly [yes, Virginia, this is only a joke], does this mean I'll have more choices with my Columbia membership?

    But seriously, I do wonder how this merge will effect the public (as in PEOPLE, as in the Constitution's "WE THE PEOPLE"). I bet there won't be ANY benefits.

  • BMG has a feature now where it's all done electronically - no postal mail at all, except, of course, when I order CDs. No more ship by default. When I first set it up (it's on their web page [bmgmusicservice.com] somewhere) i couldn't believe how much less paper it would be - and it really has elimanted all the mail from them. I get an email every month that procmail deals with quite well.
  • there just going to spam you crap from now on. You'll miss licking those stickers when your fingers start aching after deleting all the e-crap
  • To legally prevent them from ever calling again,

    You: I am requesting that you, a designated representative of Columbia House, remove my number from your dialing list immediatly. If you call this number again, I will be forced to take legal action, do you understand?

    If you request that a corporation remove your number from their lists, they legally have to do it!

    Well, not quite. I quote from my copy of the Toronto phone book:

    "... telemarketing organizations must comply with a customer's request not to be contacted again. The customer's name and telephone number must be removed from calling lists within ... 30 days of the request ... Your request to be on a 'do not call' list remains in effect for three years."

    So, if you're in Canada and Columbia House is tying up your phone line, give them the above explanation, get the caller's name (better still, talk to their supervisor or manager), note the date and time of the call, and keep the info on file. If they call you again more than 30 days and less than 3 years later, then you have a case. Taping the call isn't going to help, unless you have some way to datestamp the recording.

    ------
  • I have to say that Neal from Alta Mira is an awesome guy. I havn't yet actually ordered anything from him, but I know alot of people on the Symphony X [fortunecity.com] mailing list who recommend him alot.
  • I don't think this is a good thing. It can only make CDNOW worse. The merger of CDNOW and Musicblvd was one of the worse things to happen to online music selling. I loved Musicblvd's format and prices and that all disappeared.

  • Columbia House and the BMG Music 'Service' are quite possibly my two biggest sources of junk mail, and it took five e-mails and four real phone calls to get CD Now to stop spamming me.
    It's a match made in heaven. I only wonder why this article didn't get the SPAM tin.

  • I wonder how involved CDNow and Sony/Warner have been so far, anyway. For instance, CDNow and MusicBoulevard used the same distributor from the very beginning, long before they merged. If something was on sale at MusicBlvd, it was on sale at CDNow as well - both operating on razor thin margins, just forwarding their distributor's price to the customer. But once they merged, suddenly prices were going up significantly. Go figure!

    Considering that Sony holds lables, and many networking threads in the industry, I fear that we will see no positive impact of this deal on the end user. Just think of CDs sold exclusively through CDNow online for the first couple of weeks, or similar crap. So run, run as far as you can, and give some business to the other players!

  • Bah! (Score:1)

    by Gasboy ( 36696 )
    OK, I used to really love ordering stuff from Music Boulevard. They did all the little service-type things that CD-Now doesn't do. So waht happens? CD-Now swallows Music Bouldevard. So, I'm thinking: "Now maybe CD-Now will actually have the lower prices and better service Music Boulevard had." Of course they didn't, so now I'm stuck paying too much for CD's online, as well as at Best Buy. Now this merger with Columbia House. Let's see how much more corporate this thing can become. I think I'm going to use up the points I garnered, and then dump using CD-Now. I know a lot of you folks like CD-Now, but my two cents are I won't be going back.
  • Please excuse my poor spelling. I was incensed. Heh heh... seriously, though, I see no positives coming from this. Higher prices and less selection is my prediction.
  • I don't know how this works in the US, but in Canada we have a law about this sort of thing (though not a well known law, for obvious reasons).

    Here's how it works. Columbia House calls and you pick up. To legally prevent them from ever calling again, EVER, get a tape recorder and the conversation should proceed like this:

    You: Hello?
    CH: Hi! This is Columbia House! We know you are a former member, but we'd like to try to get you back by telling ...
    You: I'm officially informing you that this conversation is being recorded for legal purposes.
    CH: Excuse me?

    You: I am requesting that you, a designated representative of Columbia House, remove my number from your dialing list immediatly. If you call this number again, I will be forced to take legal action, do you understand?
    CH: Yes sir.


    I have done this. It works! If you request that a corporation remove your number from their lists, they legally have to do it! I hope for your sake that the states have similar laws.

  • Now don't get me wrong, I usually enjoy doing a bit of shopping online. And there's little question that, in most cases, you'll get the best prices on stuff from the web. BUT... I've yet to see any online CD store that can consistently come even close to the low CD prices I can find at any smaller, local CD store (NOT Sam Goody, Tower, etc). This becomes especially true once you factor in shipping costs.

    There's another $.02 tossed in... don't spend it all in one place!
  • I was wondering why every CD I've ordered from them has turned out backordered....

    Forget it, I'll just go to the record store...
  • I had something like that with BMG, when I wanted out. They don't have an e-mail addess or phone number you can use to unsubscribe, but instead make you write them by snail mail.

    Easy enough to get around, though...Just ignore the junk mail they send out. When they send you a cd every month ('cause you didn't respond to the junk mail saying you didn't want it) write "refused, return to sender" on the package and drop it back in the mailbox. Once they pay shipping in both directions for your cds every month, they'll call you and ask what's up, and you tell them you want out.

    Of course, a few months later, they started sending me junk mail again...But they had changed their system so that, if you don't respond, they don't send you anything. Much easier to ignore that way.
  • I am not certain as to what was on spiffy Minutes last weeek, but $4bb in loses? that
  • I am not certain as to what was on that liberal rag Spiffy Minutes last week, but $4bb in loses? That doesn't sound right..

    Fiscal Year-End: December

    1998 Sales (mil.): $610.0
    1-Yr. Sales Growth: 312.7%

    1998 Net Inc. (mil.): ($124.5)
    1-Yr. Net Inc. Growth: --

    1998 Employees: 2,100
    1-Yr. Employee Growth: 242.0%

    From http://www.hoovers.com/capsules/3/0,1058,51493,00. html

    And yes, the stock price/company worth is all based on future revenues... which have been climbing handsomely, so...

  • This will only be cool if the result is a better selection of cds at Colombia House, not a worse selection at CDNow. I buy almost all my cds online at CDNow (I have eclectic tastes :-) and would spend an awful lot less if the CDNow catalogue started looking like the one in the Sunday inserts.
  • Insound [insound.com] is the snazziest music shopping site I've come across. I'm not familiar with your progmetalwhatever, but for stuff that I'm interested in (minimalism, ambient, Japanese noise, improv, esoteric older stuff)---as well as basic college radio faves---Insound is great. They have an embedded interface to the (apparently defunct) All Music Guide [allmusicguide.com], so you can learn a lot about artists that you've only heard of in passing.
  • Same in the US. No need to record it, just write down the date and time that it happened, and be sure to request a copy of the company's "do not call list" policy, which they have to send you by law.

    I'm cruel, though. When I am called, my goal is twofold. First, to keep the other person on the phone as long as possible. Second, I want to get them off the script. I find that much more amusing personally.

    -TT
  • Does this mean that I am going to have to actually buy those other 11 selections that I promised to get when I joined columbia house eons ago? Shit(TM)! Looks like no more online music purchases for me!
  • I use Amazon when they throw me a $10 coupon. CDNow does it too but they demand I spend at least $14.95 before shipping. Fergitit. HardrockOnline gives me 20% off and free shipping. I wear a hole in that.
  • I really liked CDNow and Music Boulevard. Since the two have merged though, I haven't been particularly impressed with the CDNow site. I was there a few days ago and I could have sworn that the "Album Advisor" feature was gone (note: it's there now). I had always been tempted to join a music club, especially after cds came out. There are still some albums that I haven't gotten around to buying on cd yet. One of the reasons that I didn't ever join a music club was because they only made available artists / albums that the club's label distributed (duh.) I'm afraid that the same thing might happen to CDNow. Show up on day to find that you can only buy Sony / Columbia / Time Warner albums.
  • I am a CDNOW customer and a member of columbia's new 'play' service (no auto shipments). Will I be able to fufill my columbia obligation by buying from CD-NOW??? I hope so.
  • "I guesstimate that Columbia will save $7 Billion in postage by simply not snail mailing me any more crap. We'll see if I need procmail to pick up the slack."

    That, or we'll start getting snailmail offers to join the CDNow! cd-of-the-month club. Personally, as a CDNow customer, I'm not that happy by this.

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