The days of browsing your local Woolies for the latest Top 40 tracks are over - the ailing retailer is to stop stocking CD singles from August. In place, it’s relaunched Woolworths Download - a RealNetworks-powered music, video, games and mobile content store.

Woolworths commercial director Jim Batchelor: “CDs are alive and well for album sales, but unfortunately the physical singles market is in terminal decline. Our customers are now starting to embrace the world of download, which is why we feel the time is right to launch our new digital site.”

Back in the day, teenagers’ pocket money spent in Woolies’ music section made a significant contribution to Top 40 placings, and the store still claims a quarter of UK CD single sales, but Woolies had recently only stocked Top 20 singles. Batchelor acknowledged a “sadness”, but said UK CD single sales fell from 55 million in 2000 to eight million last year: ”The reality is that more and more people can’t remember the last time they purchased a CD single. They now choose to access both new and old music through downloading.”

The new downloads store - a relaunched version of the previous offering, built by Woolworths’ Entertainment UK unit on a RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) platform - will offer over 1.2 million songs, and over a thousand movies and TV shows, and is heavily discounting purchases at launch. Music comes as WMA or MP3 where available. The CD hasn’t gone entirely - Woolworths will contnue to stock “one-off event singles” like those from X-Factor winners - still a big money-spinner. Release. Over 90 percent of all singles are now sold online, BPI data showed last year.

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