Sony's music free to listen from Monday

we7.com changed the face of music distribution when it began giving away DRM-free and completely legal music in 2007, at no cost to listeners. Due to competition from file sharing sites, we7 never reached a mass audience. That is now likely to change.

Sony BMG have allowed we7 access to 250,000 songs its labels have produced over the years and up to the present. The music will be available for playback directly from the site, taking the total number of tracks licensed by we7 – which also include many from minor labels and unsigned artists – to nearly 1 million. Sony are the first of the 'Big Four' major labels to make their music available in this way.

Tomorrow's launch is to come after this week's announcement of we7's deals with large independent publishers InGrooves, BFM Digital and also IRIS, who distribute for renowned indie label Chemikal Underground.

The we7 site allows users to browse its catalogue and add songs, each beginning with a 5-10 second advertisement, to their personal playlist. Many of the songs can then be downloaded in the popular MP3 format.

Just as flagging sales have troubled newspapers for many years now, music sales saw seven straight years of decline up to the most recent figures, released in 2007. The steady rises in internet uptake and usage are likely to be a major factor in those trends. New business models such as we7 hope to generate a steady stream of income for artists by allowing advertisers to take out ads. Writing on the the we7 blog last Friday, co-founder Gareth Reakes claimed that the site is working on the technology to create highly targeted ads by matching copy to 'not just the genre, but the tempo of the music as well'.

The British site, a venture of music industry entrepreneur and multi-platinum-selling musician Peter Gabriel, announced the move only weeks after it was revealed that the UK was considering introducing what the BBC called 'the most stringent and prohibitive anti-piracy laws in the world.' A leaked government document proposed requiring all ISPs to monitor their customers' download activity and to take action against those downloading copyrighted material.

Ooh, ah, gone too far? Dramatic four-paper apology to begin today

Sweaty-palmed news watchers expecting a slow news day in print tomorrow are to be given something special, as the Guardian's Roy Greenslade reported in his blog tonight. It seems that the Daily Star and Express have ended up giving themselves the media story of the year so far.

The tabs, which were set to be laden with figures further detailing the economic slowdowns and the snore-inducing minutiae of the McCartney divorce, have announced a decision to carry front page apologies this morning, in addition to some hefty out-of-court damages. Their weekend editions are expected to follow suit.

The newspapers have already updated their websites with similar leads, headlined ‘KATE AND JERRY MCCANN: SORRY’. The Express's piece notes that the step of taking out a splash is ‘unprecedented.’ The articles both carry a footnote, no doubt very much willingly written, saying ‘Please note that, for legal reasons, we have disabled reader comments on this article.’

The 75p it costs to buy the two papers tomorrow will for once be money well spent, if only for the reminder the cuttings will provide of the need to practice self-restraint in journalism.

Update, daytime of March 19: It seems that someone neglected to tell the sub working on p 68 of today's issue about the grave apology being made on page one, meaning that the paper's overseas property section bears the cringe-inducing headline ‘Luz yourself in Spain.’ Not quite the sensitive touch there.

Article of the day: ‘Black Britain's darkest hour’ - Sarfraz Manzoor

The best article in today's papers was this 4300-word article detailing the impact of Enoch Powell's speech to the Conservative Association in a Wolverhampton hotel in 1968: the so-called Rivers of Blood speech.

The piece shows how Powell drew on what were until then buried resentments, changing many parts of the country from places where there was ‘not antipathy of any kind’ into places where workers could expect to see gangs lying in wait for them.

What makes the article special is the excellent set of quotes gathered from interviews with locals, including people who were new to the country at the time, who had felt that shift take place. Seeing a list of the quotes alone would be readable enough, but the writing serves to fill in the logical gaps between them, taking us through why people thought what they did. The piece is also rich with long-forgotten facts showing the impact of Powell's speech in other ways - like the fact that a special Royal Mail van was tasked with delivering the 100,000-odd letters of support sent to Powell in the weeks after he sent up what he called his ‘rocket.’

There's also an attempt to question exactly why Powell, then Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, of whom a neighbour said ‘Nobody knew who he was’ and who in 1964 pledged to resist racial discrimination, decided to prepare to give the nation a firebrand speech.

This has everything you'd want in a feature: a strong, almost academically well-supported argument; impressive evidence of some serious legwork; a sprinkling of trivia and a weighty closing line – and all given enough space to develop fully.

Swanning about in Snowdonia

Simon Jenkins writing in today's Guardian produced a sensitive account of the important political and aesthetic balance between the paper's ‘older, subtler’ yet ‘dusty’ members and the more recent ‘slick, metropolitan’ but politically ‘wind-blown’ newer folk. ‘Folk’ might aptly describe the culture of the nature-loving and often consciously amusing Guardian stalwarts characterised by Jenkins. The serious side is, he explains, that a poetic appreciation of nature and the idea that a newspaper can provide a more complete picture of the world by allowing breathing-space for more soulful - as opposed to factual - content must hold some truth.

Perhaps the next wallchart could involve politicians in the guises of fauna of the world, drawn in that textbook style that just looks so good on a poster. Nope, I see it's felines again. Although tino may well boycott that edition to show his disapproval at the way Simon Jenkin's article dismisses out of hand the once-proud muffin, placing it with the sandals and rambling canes of the fusty reader. Tino enjoys them, and he likes them chunky.