CDNow Merges with Columbia House

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.

Comments

a few clarifications

[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/

I'm one of those CDNOW customers...

[squarooticus]

...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

Where to get power/prog

[Sloppy]

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: 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: Another specialist store like AltaMira, but in progressive rock/metal rather than powermetal.
• CD Quest: 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: 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 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. :-)

Re:From Snail Mail to Telemarketing

[Inspector]

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.