The stats in the music business are astounding.  Total music sales are down so much the industry might as well not exist.  This is a few years old, but the trend is awful.  Album sales dropped more than 50% from 2000 through 2012.  
 

Single sales are up, but since this chart is on units, not $$, it is misleading.  CD sales are down 2.45MM--> 0.9MM or so?

And while the resurgence in Vinyl has made nerds like me happy, it also looks awful in the context of history.  
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The Vinyl chart looks better when the 70-80s are excluded

 
So
Do we need to start investing in record cutting machines to actually make money in the music biz?
http://www.vinylrecorder.com/cutter.html
 
 
 

So you have a cutter and outboard mixer going into the lathe device. However is it cost effective unless you can afford to lose money on your investment.
 
Vinyl itself though has to mastered a bit quieter than modern stuff as well. Certainly Vinyl is expensive to buy and produce. 

Nerd on Maurice. Nerd on.
 
I burn my songs to CD.

What shall we do then?

jamesg1213
What shall we do then?

Put Bapu in charge of everyone's self promotion. 
 
He's a legend in his own lunchtime.

To make money you need CELEBRITY music is just an step in achieving it. Better if you can achieve it by being a moron on realty TV, no need for that singing nonsense.

Maybe sales would be better if the industry stopped trying to force feed utter schlock to the masses.
 
Yes, yes. I know...
 

Vinyl has only seen a resurgence among certain groups. Of course there's always been a healthy market for vinyl among the dance music crowd, but I think the only other people contributing to the resurgence these days is hipsters listening to bands like Arcade Fire on their USB turntables. It's funny because they talk about the superior sound quality of vinyl but they're not exactly audiophiles and have the most basic equipment.
 

Our Books-A-Million store was recently converted to a 2nd and Charles store. Still a bookstore, but a lot of other stuff, especially comic books (lots of comic books). One of the things that was brought in was a vinyl LP section. It is big - significantly bigger than the CD section. Plus they have a wide selection - Rock albums take up the most space, but they also have R&B, Country, and International music among others. Surprisingly, they also have older albums. In the Country section I saw albums by Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, Bill Anderson and others. The other surprise was that they were selling the nice AudioTechnica turntables instead of the Crosley knock-offs.
 
Not sure exactly what the whole vinyl reemergence is about (or how long it will hang around), but there was a bunch of folks looking over the albums, and from all age groups as well. Plus a whole lot of floor space devoted to the product as well.

sharke
Vinyl has only seen a resurgence among certain groups. Of course there's always been a healthy market for vinyl among the dance music crowd, but I think the only other people contributing to the resurgence these days is hipsters listening to bands like Arcade Fire on their USB turntables. It's funny because they talk about the superior sound quality of vinyl but they're not exactly audiophiles and have the most basic equipment.
 

 
Yeah, but they need USB turntables so that they can easily transfer the vinyl recording to their computers so that they can convert them to mp3s, right ?