Columbia House is a direct seller of compact discs and DVD movies, offering its selections mainly through clubs. Memberships are placed through advertisements in magazines and through the Columbia House Web site. The membership typically offers a number of CDs or DVDs for the price of a single item. In exchange, the member is required to purchase so many more items over a set number of years, at regular price.

The company is known for its negative-option marketing, where it sends members a card out with a featured CD or DVD every few weeks. If a member fails to return the card, Columbia House assumes the member wishes to have the item sent. Recently, Columbia House has started positive-option versions of its program, that do not require any cards to be returned.

Columbia House has made forays into other media besides music and movies. For a few years, Columbia House offered a CD-ROM club, allowing customers to buy computer games. It is now allowing members to buy video games from its site, but thus far hasn't offered a club.

It was announced recently that Bertelsmann would buy Columbia House and merge the operation with its BMG Direct unit. BMG Direct offers a similar music club to Columbia House. In the summer of 2005, the music club celebrated its 50th anniversary - but that mailing marking the anniversary was the last. Columbia House announced that they would no longer be offering CDs, and all their Music Club subscribers would be transferred over to BMG's service. Columbia House is still selling DVDs.