CD Single - History

History

Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms" (1985) is reported to be the world's first CD single, issued in the UK in two separate singles as a promotional item, one distinguished with a logo for the tour, Live in '85, and a second to commemorate the Australian leg of the tour marked Live in '86. Containing just four tracks, it had a very limited print run. CD singles were first made eligible for the UK Singles Chart in 1987, and the first number 1 available on the format in that country was "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" by Whitney Houston in May 1987.

The 8 cm (3 in) CD single format was originally created for use for singles in the late 1980s, but met with limited success, particularly in the U.S. The smaller CDs were more successful in Japan, and have recently become more common in Europe, marketed as "Pock it" CDs. By 1989 the CD3 was in decline in the US (replaced by the 5-inch CD single, called CD-5).

It was common in the 1990s for U.S. record companies to release both a two-track CD and a multi-track (usually "remix") maxi CD. In the UK, record companies would also release two CDs, but usually these consisted of three tracks or more each.

During the 1990s, CD single releases became less common in certain countries, and often released in smaller editions, as the major record labels feared they were cannibalizing the sales of higher-profit-margin CD albums. Due to pressure from record labels, singles charts in some countries became song charts, allowing album cuts to chart based only on airplay, without a single ever being released. In the USA, the Billboard Hot 100 made this change in December 1998, after which very few songs were released in the CD single format in the US, while they remained extremely popular in the UK and other countries, where charts were still based solely on single sales and not radio airplay. At the end of the 1990s the CD was the biggest-selling single format in the United Kingdom. With the advent of digital music sales, the CD single has largely been replaced as a distribution format in most countries, and most charts now include digital download counts as well as physical single sales.

In Australia, the Herald Sun reported the CD single is "set to become extinct". In July 2009, leading music store JB Hi-Fi ceased stocking CD singles because of declining sales, with copies of the week's No. 1 single often only selling as few as 350 copies across all their stores nationwide. While CD singles no longer maintain their own section of the store, copies are still distributed, but placed with the artist's albums. This is predominantly the case for popular Australian artists, such as Jessica Mauboy, Kylie Minogue and most recently Delta Goodrem, whose recent singles ("What Happened to Us", "Put Your Hands Up (If You Feel Love)" and "Sitting on Top of the World" respectively) were released on CD in limited quantities. The ARIA Singles Chart are now "predominantly compiled from legal downloads", and ARIA also stopped compiling their physical singles sales chart. "On a Mission" by Gabriella Cilmi was the last CD single to be stocked in Kmart, Target and Big W, who then concluded stocking newly released singles. Sanity Entertainment, having resisted the decline for longer than the other major outlets, has also ceased selling CD singles.

In China, singles are seldom released physically, and most are digital downloads or radio-only singles. This is due to the amount of pirating and illegal file sharing over the internet.

In Greece and Cyprus, the term "CD single" is used to describe an extended play (EP) in which there may be anywhere from three to six different tracks. These releases charted on the Greek Singles Chart (before it abandoned tracking altogether) alongside songs released as singles.