REM's social network

Hear new tracks on Facebook

24 March 08 - Fans can hear new REM tracks on the band's Facebook page today, a week before the new album, Accelerate, hits the shops. 

This comes on the same day the band play London's Royal Albert Hall for the first time. 

The whole music business needs to catch on

REM are the latest band to use the internet as a marketing tool, following in the recent footsteps of Radiohead, who gave away their latest album In Rainbows online for whatever you felt like paying. 

Music critic Neil McCormick says this is the beginning of bands experimenting with the internet, and the music business has to catch up:

"Everybody's trying out new methods of getting the music around. Nobody quite knows what the new form of distribution will be... at the moment if you're putting something on the internet it doesn’t cost anything, anyone can put anything anywhere. The music business is convulsed with fear and excitement about what that means."

"Music is such a social thing" - Matt Phillips, BPI

Matt Phillips from the British Phonographic Industry says this is an excellent way to market to music and to share music legally:

"Music is such a social thing, this is a way of sharing music legally with other friends. This is just another new model for record companies and artists to take their music out there."

Legal platforms for sharing music

Matt Phillips went on to say that the black market has put pressure on the music industry to create legal platforms for sharing music: 

"This is a licensed legal service  against the backdrop of most music being available for free illegally, the record companies are trying to license as many new services as possible, to give music fans an option, because we want more ways of music fans to get their music."


Ruth Barnes