The Good
Budweiser rocks while Heineken grooves. Both sites offer quite respectable links to new music. Budweiser gravitates more toward rock bands while Heineken’s selection, through a project called Red Star Sounds, features more R&B and hip hop.

Genre preferences aside, Heineken does a little better job with its music features, promising a more comprehensive look at different artists (in collaboration with Def Jam records). The profusion of samples from so many artists on the Heineken site is just teasing enough to be pleasantly schizophrenic. Budweiser isn’t to be undersold though, and it is a close call; both sites excel in their offerings.

Heineken’s other highlight is a unique feature called Message in a Bottle. This feature invites surfers to enter a random message and send it out into the cyber-sea. By sending a message, users are rewarded with a random message sent out by some other surfer. Given the manner in which dark-roomed web surfing really has turned many of us into island castaways, this function can prove to be (if only momentarily) quite a strong meditation on modern society.