Hey, remember when we were all looking forward to adding arteriosclerosis to our incipient Pepsi-induced diabetes for the sake of still more free songs from the iTunes Music Store? Way back when, there was a rumor floating around that Apple was about to ink a deal with McDonald's, who allegedly planned to give away a billion free song downloads to people layin' the smackdown on their Big Mac Attacks. Unfortunately (well, depending on your perspective, we suppose), Sony came waltzing in at the last second and managed to persuade the clown with the big red shoes to ditch the iTMS in favor of the newly-launched-- and Mac-incompatible-- Sony Connect service. Or so the rumor went.

Well, we've now got confirmation, of sorts: the Financial Times reports that McDonald's and Sony have indeed formed a "marketing alliance" that hopes to "attract more teenagers" to Mickey D's while helping to "build a following" for Sony's fledgling music service. Details are somewhat lacking; apparently Big Macs will start coming with "vouchers for free music downloads," but we don't know when, how many, or for how long. Then again, the point's pretty moot for us Mac users anyway, short of being able to moan about precisely what we'll be missing. Which is always nice, sure, but we doubt it's strictly necessary.

That doesn't mean, of course, that you can't still gorge yourself on Quarter Pounders for a month à la Super Size Me; if that's your chosen cause of death, go get greasy and more power to you. It just means that you won't actually get any free iTMS downloads for your trouble, so we probably won't see a sudden massive increase in congestive heart failure in the Mac community once this promotion gets off the ground. Then again, we didn't see anyone actually carbonate himself to death during the Pepsi promo, either (although not for lack of trying), and if performance of the McDonald's-Sony promotion is as anemic as the iTunes-Pepsi one's was, even Wintel users probably won't be keeling over dead nearly as often as you might expect.

Notice that we said "expect" and not "hope." It's called restraint. Aren't you proud of us?

Whatever. With the Pepsi thing now just a dim and bitter memory and the McDonald's promo having been successfully subverted to the Dark Side, we here at the AtAT compound were casting about for some new scam by which we might score a bunch more free songs, and thanks to MacMinute, we think we've found our angle. The USA Network (best known for casting Bill Gates to play Christopher Walken) is running a sweepstakes to promote its upcoming show The 4400, which looks like someone took an unused X-Files script and turned it into a whole freakin' series. Not that we won't watch it, mind you; it is on TV, after all. Or it will be. Whatever.

Anyway, the relevant bit is what you can win in the sweepstakes-- namely, a whopping 4,400 (get it? It's a theme) free songs from the iTMS and a 40 GB iPod on which to stick 'em. If you're not lucky enough to win the grand prize, you've still got a shot at winning one of ten 15 GB or 20 GB iPods, although none of those comes with any free songs, so who cares? The grand prize, though-- geez, just picturing a 4,400-song credit showing up in iTunes is making us all dewy-eyed and wistful. Then again, now that we think about it, just clicking 4,400 "BUY SONG" buttons is likely to make someone's mousing hand fall off at the wrist; here's hoping USA doesn't make the winner enter 4,400 individual claim codes to rack up the credits in the first place, or else said wrists will explode with enough force to extinguish all life within a twelve-mile radius. Still, it's a small price to pay, isn't it?