Are you happy now, hipsters? Instead of walking away from your fashionable fad at its peak hipness, you’ve let it linger long enough to become a consumer commodity. Not only is hipster-beloved brand Urban Outfitters thriving, it’s now spawning unholy consumer electronics like this cassette-playing turntable.
It’s easy to point the finger at ION Audio for a creation like this — and we do, at least in part — but Urban Outfitters deserves most of the blame for continuing to fan the hipster flames and creating genuine demand for a $US99 ($140) record player that also plays another medium we were all pretty certain was dead.
Urban Outfitters positions the portable device (powered by four AA batteries) as an easy way to convert classic vinyl and forgotten audio cassettes to MP3 files through iTunes. But that’s complete BS when elsewhere on its site it’s also selling albums on vinyl and cassette, and even blanks for making your own modern mix tapes.
To make matters even worse, the ION Duo Deck is almost certainly not the best way to listen to either your vinyl or cassette collection. So even if you’ve convinced yourself that analogue audio is superior to digital, at least spend a few extra bucks to make your outdated music sound as good as it can.
[Urban Outfitters via Chip Chick]