 NEW YORK (Radio News Website) - 50 Cent, who had the top song on the chart lists, had a radio audience that was 28% larger than the No. 2 song, Sean Paul's Get Busy. That query once generated an automatic "duh" response from the music industry. But now, when music fans are supposedly abandoning radio to download songs into their MP3 players, music sales are declining and radio formats are more fragmented than ever, the old truisms have been questioned. The songs heard by the largest number of radio listeners in 2003 were compiled and compared with the year's best-selling albums - some highlights: 32 of the top 40 airplay hits were from albums in the top 100. Similarly, 32 of the top 40 albums had songs that made the top 100 airplay list. 
50 Cent had both the top song and album of the year. The Get Rich or Die Tryin' album sold 6.5 million copies, 27% more than runner-up Norah Jones. In da Club (the biggest of three 50 Cent hits in the year's top 20) had a total radio audience 28% larger than No. 2 song Get Busy by Sean Paul. Airplay doesn't always drive sales. All the top 10 airplay songs were from albums in the top 50. But the No. 14 song (Uncle Kracker's Drift Away) came from an album that ended up at No. 198. - Rap and R&B records made up the bulk of radio's top hits: 70% of the top 40 songs, 53% of the top 100 and 42% of all the songs that made the weekly top 100 list in 2003.
- No country songs made the top 40, but 14% of all the records that hit the top 100 were country.
 - Pop was the leading genre among the top 40 albums, accounting for 35% to rap/R&B's 28%, rock's 22% and country's 12%. (One album, the hits anthology Now 14, includes rap, R&B, rock and pop tracks.) As for record sales as a whole, the music industry got some qualified good news in 2003. If you add in the 19.2 million track downloads that have been tracking June 29, sales totaled 687 million � less than 1% off 2002's 693 million.
Even without the track downloads, the decline is about 3.6%, much lower than 2002's 12.9% drop from 2001. And the fourth quarter was up 10.5% over last year's.  More sales news:
CD sales were down 2.1%.
Sales of current albums were off 1.3%, but sales of older albums dropped 7.5%.
Internet album sales were up 20%.
DVD music video sales jumped 104.5%.
Sales of country albums dropped nearly 10%, while rap was off 8.8% and R&B fell 6.9%.
Latin music was up more than 15%.
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