Before PCs existed it was typical to have a turntable and cassette recorder, with many having reel-to-reel tape decks to act as media servers today, Rip vinyl to reel-to-reel, set aside vinyl, copy to cassette for disposable media for your car or portable boom box.
This avoided wear on delicate vinyl (it was common to play once to make sure the record was undamaged then again to rip it) which was stored as a master copy. Dual cassette decks were common to duplicate tapes or play them one after the other.
I would not say reel-reel decks were typical. They were really expensive and there was very little pre-recorded material for them. I do think they were a more common phenomenon pre-1975 or so, before the compact cassette became competitive with Dolby noise reduction and metal oxide tape. But even then a decent stereo reel-reel deck was a luxury item.
However, the LP -> cassette thing was totally common. I still have a couple of dozen LPs which I bought new and have been played less than a dozen times. In the early 1990s you could buy near new used LPs for like $2-3, which was great for grabbing greatest hits or other marginal material not worth spending $12 for a poorly mastered CD with near zero booklet content.
Cassettes made portable music practical. (Score:2)
Before PCs existed it was typical to have a turntable and cassette recorder, with many having reel-to-reel tape decks to act as media servers today, Rip vinyl to reel-to-reel, set aside vinyl, copy to cassette for disposable media for your car or portable boom box.
This avoided wear on delicate vinyl (it was common to play once to make sure the record was undamaged then again to rip it) which was stored as a master copy. Dual cassette decks were common to duplicate tapes or play them one after the other.
Re:Cassettes made portable music practical. (Score:2)
I would not say reel-reel decks were typical. They were really expensive and there was very little pre-recorded material for them. I do think they were a more common phenomenon pre-1975 or so, before the compact cassette became competitive with Dolby noise reduction and metal oxide tape. But even then a decent stereo reel-reel deck was a luxury item.
However, the LP -> cassette thing was totally common. I still have a couple of dozen LPs which I bought new and have been played less than a dozen times. In the early 1990s you could buy near new used LPs for like $2-3, which was great for grabbing greatest hits or other marginal material not worth spending $12 for a poorly mastered CD with near zero booklet content.