For me, there are two ways to listen to music: to concentrate closely on an artist, a song, or an album and listen carefully to each note and word; or to play a variety of songs in the background while I do something else, barely noticing the words.

Apple has launched a new service called “iTunes Essentials” to sell music by “theme”, meaning you can buy, with one click, a playlist of songs suitable for a road trip, a christmas dinner, or a dance party. First question: is this suitable for anyone else besides me? Or do you always prefer to play an artist, an album, or a song by itself?

Second question: is this approach worth pursuing for eventsATstanford? Meaning, should we gather together events of a certain “theme” and offer it as a package–an iCal file, an email list subscription, etc. It is a different approach than mass-customizing a calendar for each person (one of our original goals), but it does introduce an element of editorialization, which might improve the adoption of this technology–if you can assure people that someone handpicked these events because of their quality, it might help move the service into the mainstream.

The source for this thought is The Experience Economy, which I am finally reading.