| abstract | - The Columbia Record Club was established originally as a warm and friendly service that marketed music by mail. It was created in hopes of attracting the attention and money of hicks out in the country, who could not get to the record store in the nearest town because their mules were not fast enough to get them there in less than a day. As additional bribery, the organization claimed that a free record was sent out to anyone who joined. This record was by Creed and usually ended up in the dumpster as soon as it reached the door of its recipient, but nobody knew this beforehand. People signed up by the thousands. The organization first ran into trouble when record store owners became angry that their business was being impeded by this new service. Angrily, they began to protest with torches and pitchforks, and eventually the Columbia Record Club gave in. In order to appease the angry mob of ticked-off record store owners, they made the agreement to only make the records they offered available six months after they were released to record stores. After this, many people questioned the usefulness of being signed up to the Columbia Record Club, and they promptly discontinued their memberships. In an effort to win back their providers of money, the Columbia Record Club shortened the delay of release to 3 months, but this did not help. Eventually, the CRC was kicked out of New York because people no longer wanted them hanging around, and they were forced to relocate to Terre Haute, Indiana, a city famous for its large giraffe population.
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