Columbia House to cease operations after 71 years.

Another “rite of passage” from my teenage years is hitting the dustbin. Columbia House’s Subscription Program is ending. (To be fair, I would’ve thought that this service died long, long ago.)

Columbia House regularly sent out free opportunities to join (actually, I think that joining cost a penny). Essentially, you would purchase a membership and receive some albums (in my case on cassette). For some reason, it seems that I got 3 or 5 albums free. The membership included the agreement to purchase a number of albums in the future. Every month, one received Columbia’s offers to purchase albums. This was the precursor to the AOL CD’s that would be arriving later on.

As a side note, I’m fascinated by the URL on this article.