When Taylor Swift's new CD came out, I took my 17-year-old daughter straight to Target after school to buy it. Yes, the PHYSICAL CD. Taylor Swift is her favorite artist, and she listens to her CD before every track meet.

But why, you may ask, would a 17 year old buy an actual CD rather than the download? Well I wish I could say that its because she wanted the experience of holding it in her hands, savoring the liner notes, appreciating the care with which the songs were chosen and ordered, perusing the credits to see who wrote the songs, who's playing the guitar solos… you know, all those reasons those of us who are older than 30 understand. 

But the real reason is that she's driving her dad's 1999 Acura, which is too old to have an iPOD jack and too new to have a tape player to plug in one of those converters. So the CD is more practical.

But thinking about this brought me back to this core question: is the product the song, or the CD?

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that songwriters (and writers in general) are the only artists who create something out of nothing. No raw materials are used in the creation of a song. The intellectual property that's created is the song… so maybe the physical or digital media that carries it is more like the mat and frame would be in the case of a painting? So is it up to the artist, or the buyer, to choose the matting and frame?

With both our CD products we agonized over song order. Everyone does. You see, to the artist, these songs are glimpses into our souls. Choosing what feel you want that first track to invoke, deciding what flows into what, how the entire project builds and releases over the course of 10 or 12 tracks – this process is part of the art.

Then, 9 times out of 10 the tracks are dumped into iTunes and sorted alphabetically. In the end I suppose its the buyers choice, but you can miss a lot that way.

In the case of our Christmas CD, Starry, Starry Night, for example, there is a bonus track (track 11) that isn't noted anywhere on the track listing or liner notes. After about 30 seconds of silence, you hear a verbal exchange… "are you ready?"  "no!"  "1-2-3-4…"

Ready or not, the music starts. Its my son Kevin playing Jingle Bells on the trumpet in 6th grade after only two months of lessons, accompanied by my stepson Stephen on piano and me on flute (which I haven't played in years). The track was recorded live, then Greg's daughter Laura added the jingle bell track later, disregarding the cardinal rule that you always record the rhythm tracks first.

You can buy this single of Jingle Bells on iTunes, and believe it or not, people have.

I'm not sure it really has the same impact as it does as a bonus track on the CD, though. In fact, we just fulfilled a rush order for 10 copies of Starry, Starry Night for a couple that plans to give the CDs as gifts to each of their Thanksgiving guests this year. They specifically noted their love for the bonus track in their order. And I'm pretty sure they like the rest of it as well.

I haven't listened to the whole CD all the way through yet this year – I usually do each Christmas. It takes me back to that process, when we agonized over song order, debated whether or not to capitalize the song titles, draped Christmas lights over our shoulders for the inside photo and I wrote these words in the liner notes:

It is fitting that our first full length project be a collection of Christmas songs, because this is how we started singing together in the first place. And every Christmas, we are thankful that we can sing together again.

And while we're grateful to everyone who loves our music enough to buy even one track off iTunes, if you never hold the CD in your hands, you'll miss a lot.