I joined Columbia and BMG (originally RCA) many times. I regularly forgot to send the monthly card in that said I didn't want the selection of the month and got sent an album I didn't want. I remember first joining one in 1983 and getting vinyl. The big cardboard box arrived and it was like Xmas. I opened it up and what I remember is going through the albums one by one and then finding an Anne Murray album mixed in. They goofed and sent me an Anne Murray album! Apparently this was a common thing back then. Getting one album mixed in that you didn't select. Many friends had a similar experience. I think my Mom had to bail me out of that first "membership" cause I couldn't afford to pay for the other 3 or 4 albums I had to buy at regular price. The regular price plus shipping and handling was really jacked up from what you'd pay in the local record store.

Years later I rejoined them around the time for CDs. Again, there was such a rush of adrenaline getting that box in the mail and having 10 new CDs. What was even better was convincing a friend or my sister to sign up so that I could get 1 or 2 free CDs for singing up a friend. But what we figured out was we could just use a fake name and use the same address and pretend you were signing up a friend. So you'd join and get your 10 free CDs. then you would sign up a "friend" (your fake name) and get 1 or 2 for singing them up…. but also another 10 free CDs sent to the fake name.

ah those were the days.

But MonoStereo you mention finding some rare stuff, etc. I remember sometimes having trouble finding 10 CDs I really wanted. So needless to say I picked up some CDs that I might've not selected otherwise (I'm looking at you Whitesnake and White Lion -- forgive me it was the 80s.)

And I remember that the RCA/BMG club CD's always seemed to be mastered at a lower volume than "regular" discs. You always had to crank 'em up a little more.

It's odd that I never did the thing where I had phantom accounts, etc. I should've been more devious as a teen. Ha ha. But I joined them all multiple times, back in the vinyl days & CD's too.

The last one I was in was a spinoff of BMG called yourmusic.com. This is just several years ago. All CD's were $6.99 w/free shipping. You'd build a queue, & whatever was at the top would ship to you on your "due date" that month. You could reorganize the cue in terms of which albums were your top priority, etc. It wasn't bad...I got a lot of greatest hits CD from them.