Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
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Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#2Did the article ever get to why Columbia House failed? I gave up due to the obnoxious ad load (eleven external sites according to Ghostery), and that obnoxious Timescapes moving ad (which reloaded from the beginning with every text scroll, which means every 1-3 paragraphs) slowed it down to the point of being unreadable.
Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#3My first job out of high school was entering those Columbia House applications into a computer database.
The amount of fake applications I, personally, came across was astounding. I can remember, on my first day, coming across a batch of applications that were so obviously all from the same person -- different CD selections (six-digit numbers, if memory serves) and different names but the same mailing address and same handwriting. I went up to ask my supervisor what I should do about them and was told to enter them in regardless. Basically, it did not matter one bit if the apps were fake or fraudulent. My job was to enter them into the computer. It was explicitly NOT my job to decide whether they were legitimate or not. I wondered then how they managed to make any money.
Even before I worked there, though, it was common knowledge amongst my friends in high school that you could put whatever information you wanted to on the applications and the CDs would still come in the mail.
Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#4Did the article ever get to why Columbia House failed? I gave up due to the obnoxious ad load ( eleven external sites according to Ghostery), and that obnoxious Timescapes moving ad (which reloaded from the beginning with every text scroll , which means every 1-3 paragraphs) slowed it down to the point of being unreadable.
People started ripping their huge CD Collections (essentially digital masters) and sharing them on Napster and P2P Networks.
Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#5My first job out of high school was entering those Columbia House applications into a computer database. The amount of fake applications I, personally, came across was astounding. I can remember, on my first day, coming across a batch of applications that were so obviously all from the same person -- different CD selections (six-digit numbers, if memory serves) and different names but the same mailing address and sam…
Interesting! Did your office have a quota or bonus that depended on how many applications were entered? It sounds like some perverse incentive that made sense at corporate HQ but had unintended side effects. :)
Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#6From the article:
"There is an alternative to [Spotify], in getting outside of it, but only if we have net neutrality. If they really fuck with net neutrality, then I don’t know what independent musicians are going to do. Right now, you can go up on Bandcamp and you can put out your record, and they take their 15 percent cut, and you can make a fair amount of money selling a couple hundred CDs. You can do okay. But if that kind of freedom is taken away, then it’s going to be a really strange game."
This is some bizarre logic that has filtered down into the general population - that if ISPs are allowed to prioritize traffic, it inevitably leads to people not being allowed to sell zip files of their band's music.
It's a ridiculous conclusion to draw.
Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#7 The whole business was premised on this concept called negative option.
Which just sounds so creepy and draconian and weird, but the idea that if
you don’t say no, we’re going to send you shit. It’s going to fill your
mailbox, and we’re going to keep sending it unless you panic and beat
us back. That was how the money was getting generated.
Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#8The whole business was premised on this concept called negative option. Which just sounds so creepy and draconian and weird, but the idea that if you don’t say no, we’re going to send you shit. It’s going to fill your mailbox, and we’re going to keep sending it unless you panic and beat us back. That was how the money was getting generated. Interesting article, but a bit too long. I think in The Netherlands (and perh…
In the US it is Book of the Month Club (surprisingly still in business).
Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#9From the article: "There is an alternative to [Spotify], in getting outside of it, but only if we have net neutrality. If they really fuck with net neutrality, then I don’t know what independent musicians are going to do. Right now, you can go up on Bandcamp and you can put out your record, and they take their 15 percent cut, and you can make a fair amount of money selling a couple hundred CDs. You can do okay. But i…
It depends how you interpret non-neutrality:
1. Laws written to allow different "lanes" of traffic, with protections that prohibit censorship and don't raise the bar of entry for websites.
2. Providers mostly have free reign to slow/stop any data that crosses their network and charge anyone however they want.
Given Facebook's internet.org and similar "zero-rating" schemes, I'm not sure you can dismiss argument 2 so easily.
Re: Former Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny”
#10My first job out of high school was entering those Columbia House applications into a computer database. The amount of fake applications I, personally, came across was astounding. I can remember, on my first day, coming across a batch of applications that were so obviously all from the same person -- different CD selections (six-digit numbers, if memory serves) and different names but the same mailing address and sam…
surely filtering out the false applications should have been the task of programmers / DB admins once the data was all in the DB.