Yah, that's VERY common. Luckily even out of warranty, you can get new "top cases" (that's the part name) for about $40, and it takes a little less than 20 minutes to do.
Given that CDs were introduced in 1984, I'd say that $15 today is comparable to $7 then...
I'd gladly pay $20 for good quality recordings from good bands. I do, often, in fact
It's a value perception problem. CDs are $15-20 when DVDs are also $15-20.
But really the problem is that the music that's getting distributed is terrible.
Thing is, the record sales doubling wouldn't be a blip on the volume of cd sales. The markets are orders of magnitude different.
And most people would say $2500 is a fortune for a turntable.