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BMG Music Club - new twist

Hi all,

I joined BMG some years ago -- you know, 12 CDs for the price of 1. Joined for the free CDs, bought a few additional CDs, then got tired of returning the cards, and dropped out.

Every now and again, they send me a packet of info to get me to re-join, and I always lose interest when I look over the album choices they offer for signing up -- lots of great artists, but never the exact title you are looking for (I'm not a fan of "best of" albums generally), and kind of mainstream, for obvious reasons.

Here's what's new: the latest blurb from them mentions that you can sign up via the Internet. I did, because when I checked it out, you can choose from 12,000 titles for your "free" albums! Searchable by category, artist (works better than the category search), etc. I have a huge wish list from recommendations made here at Audiogon. About half of the titles I looked for, they have! So I'm getting Kleiber's Beethoven 5th & 7th symphonies, Aretha Franklin's 2-CD gospel recording, a Dylan album, an Emmy Lou Harris album, and I can't remember what else. Looking forward to getting that box!

In the FAQ on their site, they address the oft-posed question of whether their CDs are physically of the "same" quality as the original labels. They claim that they don't make any CDs, and that all their CDs come from the original labels, specially-marked per a contractual agreement. I don't know if that makes anyone feel better...

One thing they don't specify on their site is what the infamous "shipping and handling" charges are. As I recall, it's something ridiculous like $3.00 *per CD*. Pretty steep -- it means those 12 CDs actually cost you about 50 bucks -- still a good deal if it's music you want.

Well, thought I'd pass that along in case there are other folks out there who throw those mailers out regularly like I do...

- Eric
ehart
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
BMG CD quality is different with the one without the BMG label on it. Tese are cheap CDs produced by or for BMG and they realy compromise in sonic quality. You basically get whatever you've paid for. I'm in NY so I can shop for the bargain classical CDs for as low as $2 per each or double.
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
Marakanetz. While it is true BMG has its non BMG label club CDs made for the club in most cases, the rest is probably an urban legend/rumor. BMG is more than a club. It is one of the largest recording distributors in the world. It has over 200 record labels in 54 countries.

One of the big audiophile magazines did an extensive test and could not find a difference in the quality of any of the CDs. They lab tested them and did listening tests.

BMG has the manufacturing facilities, so making other company's labels under license is cheaper than buying and reselling. The club CDs come out of the same factories as their own labels they send to stores.

seldenr
59 posts
 
Sugarbrie, can you point me to the mag that did this test? I am also a member of BMG, but have used them only to purchase CDs that I am not that interested in, and would not buy but for the price. I have been concernced about the quality of the CD, so I generally only purchase items that I just want to have for occasional background music. I still purchase my "must have" items at the normal "retail" outlets, or at least Amazon, CDconnection, etc. Have you done any comparisons yourself to see if you can tell a difference? I have read many of your postings so I tend to trust your ears.
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
There is a couple test articles out there. The Stereophile one is at:

http://www.stereophile.com/showarchives.cgi?55

aroc
760 posts
 
What the original posted "Eric" discovered is really old hat. I used to collect the BMG catalogs back in high school (almost decade ago). The trick was to collect as many as I could, so I could get all the catalog number for thousands of CDs. Without having the internet search engine back then, this was the lcosest I could get. They make it SEEM that you have to pick 12 (or whatever) CDs from the catalog they send you. but this has NEVER in the last 9 years been the case. As long as you have the catalog number of the CD you want, you can order ANY CD in that list of 12 of $0.01. ANY CD.

Friends used to love that fact I had so many catalogs, which pretty much allowed you to get anything for $0.01. I don;t know how many times I signed up under different names to get the 12 CDs for $0.01. It must have been 12 or 13 times, LOL. And a cool trick in the beginning was BMG wold often distakenly let you get BOXED sets, and still count it as one free CD, LOL. True. You'll never get away with that now. In fact they caught on years ago. But I still have the 10 discs Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd (etc) boxed sets, and each (laughably) only counted as one disc.

To this day I can't believe it worked. Though sadly those discs are all scratched to heck. Lending to friends, playing in cars, etc, took it's toll.

But yeah, BMG will let you choose any CD in their catalog for those initial 12 disc offerings. Not just they ones in the catalog they initially send you. Any CD. Though now they count 10 discs multisets as 10 selections (or they used to a few years ago, and rightfully should) and not 'one' selection. I still can't believe I got away with that. Someone was sleeping at the wheel on that order!
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