Outsourcing Music Videos to the Fans

For R.E.M., the make-your-own-video site is only part of an online buzz-creating plan that kicked off last year. When the band was in Dublin finalizing the new tunes last year, it rented a theater and invited fans to have a listen. Attendees were invited to snap pictures and blog away at an official site for the project, called remdublin.com. The band's manager, Bertis Downs, calls the site a "Wikipedia of our stay in Dublin."

And though R.E.M.'s 14th album, "Accelerate," goes on sale Tuesday, fans were able to listen to it for a few days last week on a social networking site called iLike.com, which hosted an online "listening party" that let users hear a stream of all the tracks on the new album. The experiment repeats a similar one the band tried four years ago with its previous studio album, "Around the Sun," which the band made available for listening on MySpace in the weeks leading up to the official release.

To my ears, R.E.M. sounds great on the new album, though I have to admit it's been a couple of decades since I listened closely to the 27-year-old band. (I was born in the band's home town and followed its early career with what felt like a proprietary interest.)

In an effort to keep music critics from leaking the new album to the Web, Warner Bros. put some special security on early review copies of the new disc. A copy sent my way from the publisher has my name printed on it, along with a notice that any Web-borne uploads ripped from my personal copy of the disc can be traced to me. The special disc doesn't play in my car or on my computer; I've only gotten it to play on an old Sony Walkman CD player that hadn't gotten any use in the past few years.

Despite all the high-tech efforts to keep the album under wraps, it has already been leaked to the Web and was available through file-trading BitTorrent sites since even before last week's online listening party.

It wasn't me.

"You kind of expect it at this point," sighed Downs. "It doesn't matter what you want. The reality is, things leak these days."

Downs pointed out another new first for R.E.M. with this album's release: Last week, the band made an appearance at the Apple store in London to promote "Accelerate."

"It was either that or a Wal-Mart," he said. "Just kidding."