"Heed singles mistakes," says Era.

Era's Paul Quirk warns the industry not to make the same mistakes with physical albums as it did with singles

The Entertainment Retailers Association is warning the music industry that it must not make the same mistakes over its support for physical albums as it says has happened with CD singles.

The group's chairman Paul Quirk has spoken out to Music Week in the wake of Woolworths' announcement last week to end the sale of physical singles from August in light of rapidly-falling sales, although the retailer will still sell releases from X Factor winners and one-off "event" singles. Woolworths is believed to sell around one-fifth of all physical singles in the UK, behind only HMV.

And Era hints that it will be pressing for changes to chart rules at this month's Chart Supervisory Committee meeting to allow for more experimentation with the album format.

Quirk says that Woolworths' decision to withdraw from the market did not surprise him, with consumers increasingly opting for downloads, but warns of the dangers for the CD album, which he calls the "bread and butter of the entire recording industry".

"There were a number of proposals for the CD single to try and save it, like the Friday release date and the single-track single," he says. "But we couldn't get all of the record companies to agree to the same action."

"We have to be extremely careful that we don't make the same mistakes again and end up with CD albums going the same way as CD singles," Quirk adds. "If you don't learn from previous experiences you make the same mistakes."