Columbia House, which inexplicably still exists, files for bankruptcy

The owner of Columbia House, the mail-order music club that somehow still exists in 2015, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday.

Columbia House has existed since 1955, when CBS Inc. launched the mail-order service. The company was best known for selling records, CDs and tapes, but it stopped that service in 2010.

Now owned by Filmed Entertainment Inc., Columbia House shifted to selling only DVDs. According to the court papers filed Monday, the DVD club has just 110,000 members. The company never even tried to offer a streaming service, unlike Blockbuster.

“This decline is directly attributable to a confluence of market factors that substantially altered the manner in which consumers purchase and listen to music, as well as the way consumers purchase and watch movies and television series at home,” FEI director Glenn Langberg wrote in the court documents, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Columbia House peaked in 1996 with $1.4 billion in net revenue. Last year, the company earned just $17 million. It listed assets worth $2 million and owes $63 million to over 250 creditors.

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