Columbia House Shuts Down After 70 Years

Columbia House, the mail-order music club that once flooded American homes with cheap CDs and tapes, is finally calling it quits, CNN reports. After a notice on its website announcing a Sept. 15 shutdown briefly appeared and vanished, a customer service rep confirmed to the network that operations are winding down after roughly 70 years. Outlets including NBC LA were calling it the "end of an era."

The brand hit its high point in 1996, reporting about $1.4 billion in revenue and, per People, 16 million members, powered by splashy promises like "12 CDs for 1 cent" that hooked generations of music fans into monthly bills—unless they actively opted out. But digital downloads, then streaming, gutted the model. A 2015 bankruptcy and a sale to Edge Line Ventures couldn't revive it; today, the site offers only a handful of DVDs for sale before the company fades out for good.