(FORTUNE Magazine) – A comeback award for Sixties rocker Tina Turner at this year's Grammys could easily have gone to the whole record industry. It has finally climbed out of the pit of a four-year depression that introduced a novel word, austerity, into its upbeat vocabulary. Record and tape sales by manufacturers climbed 15% to $1.93 billion in the first six months of 1984, according to the Record Industry Association of America, and for the full year could top the all-time high of $4.1 billion set in 1978. Experts credit the record industry's comeback to the general economic recovery, the role of cable music channel MTV, and the serendipitous emergence of hot artists. CBS's record group reported profits of $123.5 million in 1984, up 13% over 1983, on sales of $1.27 billion. The CBS lineup features some of the biggest movers of plastic: Michael Jackson (over 20 million copies of Thriller in the U.S., an estimated 18 million overseas); Bruce Springsteen (5.7 million copies of Born in the U.S.A.); and Cyndi Lauper (4.4 million of She's So Unusual). Troubled Warner Communications found relief in the sale of ten million copies of Prince's Purple Rain. One industry analyst worries that pressures for more giant hits will squeeze out artists with smaller audiences. ''Either make it and make it big, or you don't make it at all,'' says Jerry Shulman, marketing development vice president at CBS Records.