[citation needed] In the year 2000, the RIAA reported that CD single sales fell by 39%, with internet downloading service Napster being blamed.

[8] In October 2001, Target which was the fourth largest music retailer in the United States, announced that it will stop selling CD singles in many of its stores due to a fall in demand.

[citation needed] Smaller 3-inch CDs were made mostly in a small square case/cover form only, some including a 5-inch CD adapter to use in normal compact disc players.

[3] Woolworths Group, which previously accounted for one third of all CD sales in the country, stopped selling CD singles in August 2008, citing the "terminal decline" of the format as customers moved to digital downloads as their preferred method of purchasing single tracks[12][19] (the Woolworths chain itself would collapse the following November).

In March 2011, Mercury Records announced that they were to stop manufacturing CD singles for lack of demand and loss of money on the format in 2010.

[20] In July 2009, The Guardian reported that Florence + The Machine's single 'Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)' sold a CD and 7 inch vinyl combined total of 64 copies, where it reached number 16 in the Mid-Week Chart.

In early July 2009, leading music store JB Hi-Fi ceased stocking CD singles because of declining sales, with copies of the week's No.

That is predominantly the case for popular Australian artists such as Jessica Mauboy, Kylie Minogue and, most recently, Delta Goodrem, whose then-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.

In Germany, CD singles continue to be regularly issued by all major and some minor labels, and both of domestic and foreign artists.

[citation needed] In China and South Korea, CD single releases have been rare ever since the format was introduced, due to the amount of infringement and illegal file sharing over the internet, and most of the time singles have generally been album cuts chart based only on airplay, but with the advent of digital music the charts have also occasionally included digital download counts.

[citation needed] 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.

[citation needed] In Japan, 8 cm (3 in) 3"CD singles were initially released commercially in 1988 in a long flip-out sleeve snap-packs (Japanese: 短冊; tanzaku).

As the tanzaku sleeves slowly morphed into the use of slimline jewel cases, the mini CD single was halted from production in the early 2000s.

As popularity diminished, one of the last Japanese 8 cm CD single released was a reissue and repackaging of "I Was Born to Love You" by Queen in 2004.

However, there has been a small revival as limited edition mini CD singles with Japanese artists such as Hibari Misora with a reissue of her 1989 single "Kawa no Nagare no Yoni" in May 2019 in original long tanzaku form, by the record company Nippon Columbia[29] and in July 2024 with girl group Wink Music Service releasing To Rome with Love.