Music retailers hear registers ring as crooners, rappers top the charts.

The dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra are going head to head with rapper Snoop Doogy Dogg this Christmas season in Los Angeles' music stores. Retailers say that this diverse mix should help drive sales and many are optimistic they will easily beat last year's depressed holiday business.

Controversy has been part of the December sales uptick and retailers say the press coverage generated by Dogg's (Calvin Broadhus is his real name) arrest in a Long Beach murder case has helped sales. Another hot album, "The Spaghetti Incident" from Guns N' Roses, is also getting a lot of publicity because of a cut on the CD that was written by Charles Manson.

Dogg's "Doggy Style" broke national records for a debut artist album with 803,000 in first-week sales for the week ended Dec. 5. However, the rap album was taking a nose-dive last week and some retailers predict Sinatra, with his "Duets" album, will end the season with the top CD.

"Snoop was No. 1 his first week out but last week it dumped into No. 4," said Howard Krumhultz, the buyer for Tower Records' Sunset Boulevard headquarters store. "That was a big drop-off and now I have had to revise my sales estimate downward. We sold around 250 copies of Sinatra's 'Duets,' which has a crossover market. I expect that to be our best Christmas seller."

Krumhultz said competition has been ferocious among retailers and discounting the biggest CDs has been the way to drive consumers into the store. Tower is offering the "Duets" CD for $13.99, $4 off the list price, and "Doggy Style" for $11.99, also a $4 drop.

Tower's chief competitor on Sunset Boulevard, the Virgin Records mega-store, has matched those prices and was offering En Vogue's newest album for $10.99 and Toni Braxton's hot debut album for $11.99. These are all discounted prices at least 25 percent below suggested retail prices.

High prices for new CDs sparked Wherehouse Entertainment to offer used CDs last summer, touching off a major record industry controversy. The low Christmas prices on the hot sellers may be a reflection that music companies are holding their prices in check in an effort to head off the used-CD trend.

"These top sellers have been low-balled and act as loss leaders to create traffic," said Pete Howard, editor and publisher of Ice, a CD monthly newsletter. "These are sharp prices and it looks like retailers are spending $10 (in the cuts and sales promotion advertising) to make $1."

Rhino Records in Santa Monica has a December discount of 20 percent on all Rhino label music, according to Kimberly Spalding, store manager at Rhino's Santa Monica store. Rhino is both a music label and a retail operation with two Westside stores.

Spalding said discounts are important, but customer service is more critical at Christmas time. The hottest seller at Rhino last week was the soundtrack to the film "The Piano." She said "Doggy Style" has the highest shrinkage potential of any CD this season. Teenagers have been caught trying to rip off that CD more than others thus far, Spalding said.

The used-CD trend spawned by Wherehouse Records last summer is having a reverse impact this holiday season on smaller independent retailers that had been specializing in used CDs. They now are getting back into the new CD business.

"We have doubled our inventory of new CDs," said Wayne Johnson, president of Silverlake's Rockaway Records. "The Wherehouse has given us competition on the used, so we have to try to do something a little different. We think boxed sets like Metallica's $75 live concert set will do well for us. Snoop will be big for a few weeks because of the hype, but it won't continue strong into Christmas. We think Pearl Jam will be more continuous."

Pearl Jam's "Vs." album did 950,000 units its first week in stores in November and set a record for first-week sales.