Record club
A record club was a mail-order retail club for selling records promoted by the major record labels during the 1950s onwards.
Major clubs included
- EMI Records club founded in 1965[1]
- Columbia House (redirect from Columbia Record Club) established in 1955. It had a significant market presence in the 1980s
- Capitol Record Club, Capitol Records
- Britannia Music Club, Polygram
- World Record Club Ltd. company in the United Kingdom which issued long-playing records and reel-to-reel tapes, mainly classical
Customers usually joined record clubs by agreeing to buy a certain number of records, but a significant number of members would not pay for records they ordered. Record companies saw lower royalties from sales through record clubs than from sales through stores and other means. Also, the clubs could give away up to one free record for every record sold--resulting in about half as much revenue for record companies as they might get through other kinds of distributors.[2]
See also
- Beck's Record Club musical project initiated by Beck Hansen in June 2009
- Darlington Record Club club in the NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series from 1959 to about 2001, based at Darlington Raceway
References
- ^ Peter Tschmuck Creativity and Innovation in The Music Industry 2012 p.131 "Such clubs however were not a complete commercial success and were partially sold later on."
- ^ Passman, Donald S. (1991–2012). All You Need to Know About the Music Business. Toronto, Canada: Free Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-1-4516-8246-5.