Are CD clubs a good deal?

Yes, BMG is great. I started with their classical LP club in college back when they called it the "International Preview Society".

To get me to switch to the CD club when they were phasing out LP's they offered me 2 free CD's per year for life, as long as I remained a member in good standing. It has been over 13 years since then, and I still get my 2 free CD's from them every year. (My choice of any 2 regular single disc CD's)

BMG is using the same master digital source code as the original manufacturer. I've never heard anyone say the store bought BMG CDs are of lesser quality than other lables, so how can these be worse? BMG does not have a special factory that makes the club CD's. They come out of the same factories as their own store lables. Manufacturing them under license in their own factory is just cheaper for them, and easier to control supply.

It is interesting that a Sterophile article discusses CD's made specifically for the Columbia Club, so it is not true they only sell store CD's. It may be possible Columbia doesn't mark their "club CD's" like BMG does.

Stereophile and others have done laboratory tests of club and store CD's of BMG and Columbia, measuring them every way imaginable, and they could not find any differences. They actually did find variances between the quality of some Sony/Columbia factories, (amount of jitter) but not connected to clubs releases. So if there is some difference it can even be among different store copies (for Sony/Columbia anyway).

See this link for more information....

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