We learn with fond reminiscence that the venerable Columbia House Record Club will shut down in September. The outfit’s alluring membership pitches (“12 CDs for a penny”) spark memories across generations. We receive this flashback news from Canada’s Global News (HERE), which adds a snarky (and truthful) subhead: “Wait, it was still in business?” The club was in business for an epic 71-year span, founded by Columbia Records in 1955 as a strategy to bolster sales of the newly invented vinyl LP format. Over decades it evolved with technology, offering 8-tracks, cassettes, and CDs. At its height, which Google tells us was 1996, the outfit served 16 million members and pulled in $1.4 billion annually. File-sharing (Napster et al) soured the business, then Apple iTunes Store buried it. We learn (HERE) that revenue dropped 99% between 1998 and 2014 — one might applaud the desperate heroism of staying in business that deeply into the digital era.
Ditching the human
In what should win a Provocative News of the Day award, we learn that some major publishers have started serving its ads to AI agents, rather than (or in addition to) humans. And according to Indian pay television news channel WION, Time Magazine is one such publisher which has generated text-only pages designed for AI agents to consume. In those pages, advertisements can be formatted as editorial facts containing information specific to the advertising brand. WION explains it this way: “The publisher believes that if it can influence what AI systems read, it could in turn influence what AI chatbots tell people.” Several brands have reportedly signed up with Time. More HERE.
