Record club

A record club was a mail-order retail club for selling records promoted by the major record labels during the 1950s onwards.

Major clubs included

Customers usually joined record clubs by agreeing to buy a certain number of records, but a significant number of members would not pay for records they ordered. Record companies saw lower royalties from sales through record clubs than from sales through stores and other means. Also, the clubs could give away up to one free record for every record sold--resulting in about half as much revenue for record companies as they might get through other kinds of distributors.