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By KRYS GRANDMOND
Staff Writer

Over the past few years, big name companies and radio stations have been doing little to support our ever growing list of indie talents across this country. Molson Canadian has exposed many Canadian artists through their battle of the bands, and Niagara rock station 97.7 HTZ FM does their annual Rock Search. But while all this is great, they're hard to get into and even harder to win. And that's what you need to do to get the exposure you want ... win.

But this year, I was personally suprised to see two large corporations beginning to get involved in the Canadian indie music scene in a very different, and much more effective, way.

Budweiser, "The king of beers", has launched their TrueMusic campaign in hopes that Canadians will buy their 28-packs up for the special pin numbers printed inside. The pin gets you access to a myriad of new talent such as Amped, Crop Circle, Mud Men, Undone and many more. Also in the King's 28-packs are cd's loaded with songs from these bands so that those who don't have access to the net, or would rather a hard-copy version, can get in on the music too.

While I don't drink Bud, I can probably convince my brother to buy one for Canada Day and give me the pin so I can check it out.

McDonald's, like Budweiser, has also launched a music campaign (in association with Sony Connect and PureTracks.com) entitled "Big Mac Meal Tracks" which allows BigMac eaters to a free download on the music website.

Even though most of the music found on PureTracks is stuff we already know and love (Hoobastank, Outkast, Black Eyed Peas, Britney, etc) they have a special list dedicated to several of the bands that performed at this year's North By Northeast festival in Toronto. (You can use your BigMac pin number to download "Broken" by Soundline band Faithdown and support the guys.) As well as other not so known artists that I am going to love checking out.

The campaign limits listeners to one free download per 24 hour period and 70 maximum downloads throughout the campaign. That's still a lot of music!!

And it's also a lot of Big Mac's ... not to worry though, those I actually like ... and my father can eat 2 at a time. They're a little more reasonable too when compared to $40 for a case of beer.

I'd personally like to see more big companies get in on this new buzz. They don't realise what they can do for our struggling talents (I've been humming "Automatic" and Houston's "I Like That" since the McDonald's commercial first aired).

Who knows? Maybe one of these campaigns will break our "Next Big Thing".