Gaither Vocal Band – “New Star Shining” CD & DVD

The latest Gaither Music catalog arrived in my mailbox today. On page 1 (technically, page 2, as the cover is considered “page 1”) was an ad for the new Gaither Vocal Band Christmas album, New Star Shining, with a total of 12 tracks listed:

• Mary’s Boy Child
• Come And See What’s Happenin’*
• Home For The Holidays*
• Mary Was The First One To Carry The Gospel
• The Little Drummer Boy
• New Star Shining*
• My Heart Would Be Your Bethlehem
• Gloria*
• Jesus, What A Lovely Name
• Tennessee Christmas
• Fear Not*
• Emmanuel: This Changes Everything*

There wasn’t a release date listed, so I went over to Apple Music to check it out. There, it has a release date of October 11, with one song, “Home For The Holidays,” available early. It also only has six tracks listed, with the album listed as an “EP” (I’ve noted the tracks above with * as the ones appearing on the EP).

Apple Music EP listing

After looking at the song list again, I realized that the remaining 6 songs listed were actually digital singles from 2022 with accompanying videos. Actually, SEVEN were previously released as singles, but the single/video for “New Star Shining” is not immediately visible in the listing without specifically searching for that title.

Adding to the confusion, the GVB has a history of recycling music tracks with new vocals, and it appears that’s the case here with at least a couple titles (“My Heart Would Be Your Bethlehem” appears to have done this), while other songs (such as the title track and “Mary Was The First One To Carry The Gospel”) have new musical arrangements. I guess depending on the song, you may get an all-new version, or you may get a vocal re-cut of an existing track.

For me, however, the biggest oddity is having a full-length CD and a truncated digital EP share the same title and artwork. If streaming consumers want to hear the full album (as it’s presented on CD), they have to go track down the other 6 titles separately and create a playlist to complete the album. That’s not impossible to do, of course, but it is unnecessary, especially when you could plan for the singles to go offline on the same day as the “full” album’s release (especially by ensuring the newer release includes the same ISRC codes so the tracks don’t disappear from existing playlists).

That being said, perhaps this release is yet another indicator of how much streaming has taken over the music industry. Instead of CD’s (or records or tapes, for that matter) being the primary release, and streaming being a supplement, the model has flipped entirely, to where streaming titles are now the “record of authority,” so to speak, and physical releases are supplemental. Indeed, if you wanted to hear the aforementioned streaming singles from the GVB, you had to have a streaming service; the fact that they are showing up on a physical release TWO YEARS after the fact (and being tacked onto a new release) should probably tell you how high (or low) of a priority it is to make them available outside of streaming.

And no, it’s not just the GVB taking this approach. A couple years ago, I saw an up-and-coming country artist named Cody Webb at an event where he was selling a CD with 7 original songs on it. All 7 of those songs were available as streaming singles, while the collective CD was not; it was simply a product to have on hand at concerts. In fact, Cody doesn’t have any streaming album listings; all of his streaming releases are singles, with a new song coming out every month or so.

Southern Gospel artists are taking a similar approach, but adding USB flash drives to the mix, creating collections of albums on the removable (and technically reusable) devices – again, just to have something on hand to sell to concert-goers in the moment, although the USB format usually uses mp3’s, which are often at a lower quality compared to streamers and definitely CD’s. To be fair, USB’s are a compromise for when fans say, “I’d buy your music, but I don’t have a CD player anymore,” to which artists can say, “Oh, no problem! Here’s a USB flash drive full of our music!”

I guess, in a way, the industry has not just progressed from a technology standpoint, but also come full circle. Early commercial musical recordings were limited by physical space, so each record usually consisted of two songs maximum (one per each side). If you had a larger disc and/or shorter songs, you could sometimes squeeze two per side. “Albums,” as we came to know them, were literal books that held sleeves in them with multiple records, creating a “record album.” Until the advent of Sony’s Columbia Records’ “Long Play” vinyl format – the first time that a single disc could hold upwards of 22 minutes per side – albums were just a collection of singles packaged together. Sometimes, record labels would include songs in those albums that were not available individually in an effort to boost album sales.

What New Star Shining is doing isn’t much different than what one might have seen 75 or so years ago – collecting previously-released singles and mixing them with new, additional tracks to create a full physical album release. The only real difference is that all 12 tracks will be available outside of the “complete” album release; it’ll just take a little bit of work to hear them all as a complete album on streaming platforms.