Whole Foods is an impressive company, especially for how cleverly they’ve disguised the fact that they’re really just another corporation. It acts just like any other corporation, but because it hops on trends like “organic” and because the CEO is a vegan yogi, it’s the go-to store for the type of person who will be happy to tell you how much more aware they are than you of the world’s problems. So, in a move that is just as impressively evil and will probably make them a fortune, they’ve started selling records to exactly that person.
A brief word on vinyl snobbery: There’s nothing wrong with preferring a format to listen to music. But being a jerk about it benefits nobody; who cares what format it’s on? It’s all just a method of pushing air. It’s how that air is pushed that’s important.
But, if you are going to use records as a prop to lord your masterful taste over everyone else, you need records. And that’s where Whole Foods comes in:
The five southern California branches offer records sure to appeal to the stereotypical Whole Foods shopper: Frank Sinatra, Daft Punk, Rolling Stones, Paramore, Bob Marley and Tegan and Sara, just to name a few. The stores will also be selling LSTN Headphones, from a company that works on the TOMS shoe model.
Need we say those headphones support a worthy cause? We didn’t think so.
As a business move, it’s actually an incredibly smart one because there’s a lot of overlap between the kind of person who will lecture you about records and the kind of person who will lecture you about GMOs. Of course, there is no way that this will make this kind of person less annoying, but really, if they complain about Wal-Mart while shopping at Whole Foods, there’s nothing that’s going to crack that shell.
(Image courtesy of Julia Folsom on Flickr)
