• March 12, 2008

R.E.M. is going the way of Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead: The rock band is set to premiere "Accelerate," its soon-to-be released studio album, via the Web.

On March 24, roughly a week before the album's North American release, R.E.M. will stream "Accelerate" in its entirety on iLike, a music-focused social networking service. The band will also record an exclusive video message introducing and discussing the album, which will be available via iLike for Web distribution, and iLike members can pre-order "Accelerate" via links to iTunes and Amazon.com.

Seattle-based iLike helps its members discover new music via recommendations and shared playlists, widgets for Facebook, Bebo and the iPhone, as well as a desktop plug-in for iTunes and Windows Media Player.

--Tameka Kee