Owner Of Music Distribution Company Columbia House Wants To Revive The Brand With Vinyl

Music distribution company Columbia House wants to revitalize it’s name by turning to the classic vinyl platform.

This summer, the company went bankrupt, as modern methods of consuming entertainment went the way of streaming and digital downloading, rendering the mail-order platform the company had used for years, useless.

However, the recent saving grace of the company may have come in form of a man named John Lippman, who bought the remains of the company at a recent bankruptcy auction. Lippman points to the resurgence of vinyl as a desirable physical product that appeals to a segment of the market for music fans. He hopes that this medium will allow him to restructure the company into a working entity again.

Years ago, Columbia House prided itself on appealing deals such as “11 records for a dollar”, and the like. While the strategy worked and paid dividends for a long time (in 1996, it made $1.4 billion in revenue) Lippman assures that will not be the idea going forward. He wants to position the company similar to the equivalent of a “book of the month club” for music, but with more options.

It will certainly interesting to see how the transformation takes place. One would think that a market for mail-order vinyl records would exist, given the platform’s recent growth in popularity. Time will tell, and we will see if Lippman’s idea will revitalize a classic brand.